A fascinating article by GOD - Sir Gus O'Donnell, outgoing head of the civil service, appears in today's Telegraph.

......................................................................

Click here for details of 'Be jolly, bottom-up”, Comrade Sir David tells NHS - 'tis the season to, apparently', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

The House Of Lords Constitution Committee's updated report on the Health And Social Care Bill may at last drive some change in the legislation.

Its focus is on accountability - which was a key issue raised in the Chairman Mal confirmation hearing.

......................................................................

Health economist Professor Alan Maynard acknowledges the festive season of goodwill with the generous provision of ten commandments for the NHS in 2012

The expensive diversion of NHS reform will drag on until April-May as their Lordships scrutinise their backsides. Of course the NHS is in turmoil of wasteful change, and the pressures from this will accelerate as 2012 matures.

So how to keep your head above the waters of Whitehall drivel? Here are ten commandments for NHS managers in 2012. Ignore them at your peril.

"The fault lies with big government. With their endless targets and reorganisations, Labour have tried to run the NHS like a machine. But it’s not a machine full of cogs. It is a living, breathing institution made up of people – doctors, nurses, patients.

"This lever-pulling from above – it has got to stop. With Andrew Lansley’s reform plans, we’re going to give the NHS back to people. We’ll say to the doctors: those targets you hate, they’re gone.

The NHS is not perfect, and it needs to change seriously. We need to move care out of hospitals where appropriate, focus more on prevention and pay much closer scrutiny to the variations in activity and outcomes.

We also need to make the service considerably more patient-centred, and address significant issues around the care of the elderly co-morbid with dementia in hospitals and residential care.

Dr Michael Dixon’s speech can be found here.

Dixon ended by reading a message from PM David Cameron, and introduced conference chair Professor Chris Ham, who, noting Dixon’s rhetoric about tumbrels and late 18th century France, quipped about “the revolutionary – or is it revolting? NHS Alliance”.

......................................................................

Welcome friends and colleagues to this fourteenth NHS Alliance Annual Conference. I am delighted that so many of you have been able to make it here to Manchester on the day of the largest public sector strike for 33 years.

......................................................................

Would you like to know more about Flora Stalinism?

Who says that leadership means partnership?

What NHS reversal wil mark the next decade?

Whether the Tories' uber-donor thinks people believe in NHS reform?

Health Policy Intellgence subscribers know all this, and more.

Health Policy Intelligence is our weekly subscription-based analysis service.

The new issue, 'Flora Stalinism, leadership as partnership and loving the evil bastard - OF! There’s a nasty little sting in the Annex, too …', is now out.

Perhaps it is inevitable in an NHS whose once and future king is Comrade Sir David Nicholson that we should come to glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring).

......................................................................

The NHS Operating Framework 2012-13 is available here.

......................................................................

Click here for details of 'Flora Stalinism, leadership as partnership and loving the evil bastard. OF! There’s a nasty little sting in the Annex, too …', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.