A DNA paternity test carried out by Health Policy Insight reveals that the Coalition government's new outcomes consultation is the lovechild of New Labour peer Lord Darzi's 2008 next-stage NHS review and Professor Avedis Donabedian's 1966 classic on 'Evaluating The Quality Of Medical Care'.

‘Transparency In Outcomes’ – who could object to such a thing?

The DH has now published the first instalment of its experiment with wikipolicymaking, with the launch of the consultation about outcomes, Transparency In Outcomes. Its impact assessment is here.

Consultation responses should be sent to NHSWhitePaper@dh.gsi.gov.uk by 12 October.

Professor Matthew Swindells is leaving his current job as group MD of health for management consultancy Tribal to work for Cerner, in its global organisation.

Swindells, a former NHS hospital chief executive who became a policy adviser to the PM's Office for Public Sector Reform and then to Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt before heading the DH's informatics review and becoming the first board-level Chief Information Officer, joined Tribal in June 2008, and during his time there, the company's health revenue and profit more than doubled.

Reflections on ‘Equity And Excellence’

Irwin Brown, Socialist Health Association, July 2010

The ‘Equity And Excellence’ White Paper is actually so vague in essential areas that it should really be a Green Paper.

In support are promised a further set of documents and a lengthy letter from NHS CE Sir David Nicholson to NHS chief executives. At least 10 consultations are promised, as well as consultation on the WP itself.

The Independent has the story.

We covered Ramon Niekrash's successful employment tribunal case here back in February.

So, once again, we are asking all the Mid-Staffs questions.

Where were the regulators?

Where were the commissioners?

Who told the National Patients Safety Agency?

Morning. Below are a few responses to the White Paper from around and about:

Professor Julian Le Grand, LSE

Professor Kieran Walshe, Manchester Business School

Simon Stevens, UnitedHealth

Martin Rathfelder, Socialist Health Association

Wiser heads than mine have often pointed out that failure is more educational than success, provided you can pinpoint the reason.

It is depressing to finally get round to reading the report into the failures of Take Care Now and its commissioners that led to the death of David Gray.

The accompanying note states that
"The report highlights failings by TCN including:

As the dust settles from the White Paper where are we? Apart from the mere issues of detail to be provided in the ten (yes, ten!) consultations in the next few weeks - essential beach reading, with comments requested by October 5th - what is changing?

Goodbye old bureaucracy, hello new bureaucracy
There is a major assault on bureaucracy, with PCTs and SHAs to go. But hold on a minute: aren’t the proposed GP commissioners just PCTs run by GPs?

Moving from 152 PCTs to 500 GP commissioning consortia (GPCCs) is like going back in time to when we had 300 or so too many PCTs.

Who is going to be competing with whom in the new NHS?

1. The new management
GP commissioning consortia are going to need managers and lead clinicians (who will of course be "going over to the dark side").

The problem is that by playing organisational Jenga, you end up playing relationship Jenga.

Which is not good.