[Tubby Isaacs]

Old story but I missed this.

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/node/49433" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The email, sent on October 7, 2010, and entitled "note from Fred", contained information about News Corporation's plans. Smith said the contents were commercially confidential "but very interesting".

Hunt replied: "Very powerful actually." Asked why the exchange was conducted on his gmail account, Hunt said: "That's the only email account I use. My department email gets looked at by my private office and if there is anything they need to show me they show me. But the only email account I use is my personal account."

I'm assuming this was verified, and he did indeed only use his gmail.

But how on earth can it be acceptable to do that? How is gmail secure? Maybe Hunt's an IT ingenu...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hunt_(politician" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)#Early_career

Hunt joined Profile PR, a public relations agency specialising in IT which he co-founded with Mike Elms, a childhood friend. With clients such as BT, Bull Integris, and Zetafax Profile did well during the IT boom of the mid-1990s. Hunt and Elms later sold their interest in Profile to concentrate on directory publishing.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Ofsted for hospitals on the way.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/ ... eremy-hunt" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Hunt is pressing ahead with plans to introduce a new ratings system for hospitals closely based on the way Ofsted assesses the performance and quality of schools in England. Hospitals could be rated "poor", "requiring improvement", "good" or "outstanding" by a newly created chief inspector of hospitals, who Hunt said would become the NHS's new whistleblower-in-chief. Individual departments, such as cancer care and maternity services, would be rated separately and the hospital given an overall score.

Wonder what will happen when bits get failed.

I see he's dodged one bit of the Francis Report.

Hunt's proposals failed to impress Patient Concern, a patient campaign group. Roger Goss, its co-director, criticised the minister's refusal to implement what he called a core recommendation of the Francis inquiry – mandatory minimum staffing levels for hospitals. "Hunt's refusal to implement this, claiming that there is no relationship between nurse numbers per ward and quality of care or patient safety, is preposterous. 'Not the government's problem or responsibility' appears his attitude."

[new puritan]

Didn't Dr Foster put together a league table of hospitals one year, only to scrap it thereafter because rating them all was too expensive? I fancy this might go the same way. He's come out with some absolute bollocks about nurses today as well. Another headline-hungry cretin.

[Bones McCoy]

Odd isn't it.

People wanting to enter nursing must now spend a year "Pre qualifying" prior to training doing patient facing work on wards.

Would't this also be an excellent prerequisite for health service managers, trust board members etc?

[PaulOnBooks]

Dear Mr Hunt, there's a large component of practical experience in various settings on the mandated nursing course requirements. There's also a very good system (APL) to allow a range of work experiences to go towards a degree.

Unfortunately, Tories know nothing of this sort of detail and cling to their happy delusion that nurses used to empty bedpans with a cheery quip and an innocently sexy smile while patients magically got better through lying in bed in striped pyjamas.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

There's huge truth in that.
Comes from their own lack of workplace skills and experience - they assume everyone is as clueless as they are.

[Tubby Isaacs]

But they're called "degrees"! That means they sit in the library doing essays and never see a patient.

[PaulOnBooks]

But they're called "degrees"! That means they sit in the library doing essays and never see a patient.

DM readers probably think it means they sit in a library doing patients and never see a book.

[Fozzy]

Ofsted for hospitals on the way.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/ ... eremy-hunt" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Hunt is pressing ahead with plans to introduce a new ratings system for hospitals closely based on the way Ofsted assesses the performance and quality of schools in England. Hospitals could be rated "poor", "requiring improvement", "good" or "outstanding" by a newly created chief inspector of hospitals, who Hunt said would become the NHS's new whistleblower-in-chief. Individual departments, such as cancer care and maternity services, would be rated separately and the hospital given an overall score.

Wonder what will happen when bits get failed.

That would be the Ofsted which rated both Haringey and Stanbridge Earls as outstanding, only to go back in again within a few months after well-publicised disasters and deciding that they were in fact failing. Maybe not the best model to choose.

[satnav]

It will be interesting to see how this story plays out.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 54813.html

The Children's heart unit in Leeds was given a reprieve in the courts last week and then the next day the unit was told to suspend operations whilst a review was carried out into mortality rates at the hospital. Those people trying to save the unit claim that the NHS commissioning board are resorting to dirty tricks in order to close the unit by the back door.

I think it's fair to assume that while Hunt is health secretary any positive health news will be down to him and anything that goes wrong or looks a bit dodgy will be blamed on the NHS commissioning board.

[new puritan]

So after Hunt's big song and dance about protecting NHS whistleblowers, GPs have been, er, gagged from talking about what goes on at CCGs.

More than 1,000 family doctors have been issued with gagging orders, banning them from talking about the work of new organisations running local health services.

The extraordinary restrictions placed on staff at more than 200 GP practices have been drawn up by Clinical Commissiong Groups (CCGs), which took responsibility for the NHS budget on Monday.

The decisions were taken even though Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, last month said any clauses which stopped staff from speaking about patient safety or care should be banned.

Documents seen by the Daily Telegraph show that CCGs covering swathes of the country have issued hundreds of doctors with restrictions which mean they can say nothing about the work of their CCG, without written permission from those in charge of it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healt ... vices.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[PaulOnBooks]

Organ grinder and monkey: Cameron and Hunt back on the "if nurses washed bedpans, all would be well":

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/ ... e-training" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A good comment from a nurse:

"You just do your best with the baleful eye of managers who seem to care more for their jobs than anything else monitoring and blaming but never fighting the ridiculous reforms being railroaded in by the ever growing army of failed sales people that ´manage´the NHS without a fraction of accountability that health care professionals have."

[Tubby Isaacs]

Jeremy Hunt seems to have exaggerated the costs of "health tourism".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healt ... urism.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, subsequently claimed that health tourism is costing the health service £200 million a year. However, figures released by the Department of Health show that the NHS has been forced to write off £11 million worth of bills from foreign patients.

There could be a lot of bad debts not written off, to be fair. And doubtless some people not eligible never get billed. But they don't seem to have made that argument themselves.

[Big Arnold]

Department of Health civil servants will have to empty bedpans, push hospital trolleys and clean floors if they want to be promoted

From next month, 200 senior officials will have to perform tasks such as mopping floors, emptying bedpans and serving meals to care home residents as the Government responds to the Francis Report into patient neglect at the Mid Staffordshire Trust.
The plans, to be unveiled on Monday by Jeremy Hunt, will require top Whitehall officials to perform roles such as GP receptionist and hospital porter for a total of four weeks a year for six years.

What happens to the staff displaced for those four weeks isn't explained.

Last week Mr Hunt manned the phones at GP surgeries in Kennington and Wandsworth, south London.
He has also spent time as a hospital porter and cleaner in two of the capital's accident and emergency departments.

For how long? Just long enough for a photo shoot?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z2TeN4wKNT" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Timbo]

It's finally happened. I genuinely can no longer tell the difference between government policy and the Daily Mash. It wasn't until I clicked the link and had a jaw-dropping moment of realisation, that I discovered that this was actually serious.