The dangerous decade

The dangerous decade

Over the next 10 years, more information and communication technology (ICT) will be deployed in the health system than in its entire previous history. Systems will be larger in scope, more complex, and move from regional to national and supranational scale. Yet we are at roughly the same place the aviation industry was in the 1950s with respect to system safety. Even if ICT harm rates do not in...

Dangerous yardstick? Early cost estimates and the politics of financial management in the first decade of the National Health Service.

The object of this paper is to throw light on an apparent paradox in the financial history of the British National Health Service (NHS) in, broadly, its first decade. After the first two fiscal years of the Service a regime of tight expenditure restraint was imposed. This reflected a perception of NHS spending as excessive and subject to insufficient control.' In the first volume of his officia...

The most dangerous hospital or the most dangerous equation?

BACKGROUND Hospital mortality rates are one of the most frequently selected indicators for measuring the performance of NHS Trusts. A recent article in a national newspaper named the hospital with the highest or lowest mortality in the 2005/6 financial year; a report by the organization Dr Foster Intelligence provided information with regard to the performance of all NHS Trusts in England. ME...

Exploring the dangerous trades.

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The Most Dangerous Branch