Hello, hope you had a good bank holiday weekend and maybe even saw some sunshine.

I'm semi-off-duty today, so here are just a few links to accounts of:
Andy Burnham trying to drive a wedge between Lib Dems and their leadership on the Coalition Government's NHS issues

An infection outbreak at UCLH, now under control

This report in today's Sunday Telegraph by Laura Donnelly and Patrick Sawer reveals that University Hospitals Bristol NHS FT has made secret payments to people adversely affected by the pathology problems of that region.

It also states that the inquiry (which has had three fresh referrals since it began) has not contacted the 26 patients whose cases launched the investigation (or their bereaved families.

The Guardian reports that NHS Direct faces abolition within three years following the arrival of the new TDN (inevitably, three-digit number) 111.

NHS Redirect, as it has been affectionately known by primary care staff, is an easy target for cost savings. Its staff are expensive trained nurses, as the article highlights.

The idea that Health Secretary Andrew Lansley will hope sits in popular consciousness is that NHS Direct is a 'nice to have' service, rather than a 'need to have' one.

You may already have seen the new report from the Audit Commission on the quality of NHS PBR clinical data coding.

Hello, and happy Friday.

You may remember that I wrote previously about the surprising proposal to abolish FTs' prudential borrowing limits, and as part of the piece published my FOI request to the DH to release any economic modelling data.

The dears have replied, bless 'em. And guess what? They've got the information ... but we can't have it.

The Guardian's James Meikle and colleague report the thoroughly good and sensible news that not only can the sons of the man whom a coroner considered Dr Ubani to have unlawfully killed a 'killer', they are equally at liberty to use the word 'charlatan'.

You may remember that Dr Ubani's main area of expertise is in cosmetic surgery; yet he was able to work as a GP for the ironically-named out of hours service Take Care Now.

And so today, NICE is the bad guy for cancer drugs again. Its draft guideline assessment - not final - is that £21,000 is overly expensive for Avastin's ability to stop or shrink tumour growth in patients with advanced bowel cancer, in conjunction with other chemotherapy drugs.

NICE suggests that the usual gain is of six weeks of life. If you accept this figure as a working average, then the cost per week gained is £3,500. Per day, it's £500.

This story about a hypothesis that certain kinds of ill-health including MS and rheumatoid arthritis may be associated with Vitamin D deficiency tickled a memory, and a quick dig around the archives finds that indeed we wrote about this thesis nearly two years ago.

The genetic data looks really interesting. Oliver Gillie must be feeling pretty pleased, and it looks as if he should do.

Hello. Hope you had a good weekend.

PM David Cameron suggests to The Independent that working in the NHS would make you incapable of ever committing a crime, with his wonderful rhetorical question, "If you work in the health service, every time you go to a different hospital you have to have a new Criminal Records Bureau check. Why?"

Irwin Brown of the Socialist Health Association looks with sympathy at the roles and uses of NHS managers and management consultants

I am staggered that Andrew Lansley is staggered at the extent of bureaucracy and the cost of management and management consultants in the NHS.

Where has he been for the past six-and-a-half years?

Received wisdom (with a large invoice)