Recent articles

Safety Differently – Why Do Things Go Right?

Safety Differently – Why Do Things Go Right?

We should not just try to stop things from going wrong. Instead, we need to understand why most things go right, and then ensure that as much as possible indeed goes right. So argues Sidney Dekker in his blog Safety Differently The number of the things that go wrong is tiny. Their are a small […]

How to Increase the number of hospital admissions

How to Increase the number of hospital admissions

A 2014 systematic review by Tessa van Loenen and her team investigated which characteristics of primary care organization influence avoidable hospitalization for chronic Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions. Organizational aspects of primary care related to avoidable hospitalization: a systematic review. van Loenen T, van den Berg MJ, Westert GP, Faber MJ https://academic.oup.com/fampra/article/31/5/502/539081 The conclusion? Access to primary […]

When Patients and Their Families Feel Like Hostages to Health Care

When Patients and Their Families Feel Like Hostages to Health Care

People as consumers are often assertive in ensuring they get what they want. However people as patients are often reluctant to speak up. They understate their concerns, or ask for what is less than desired to needed, or remain silent against their own better judgement. Often they will be confused about the choices available to […]

Are we having fun yet? Understanding pressures in UK General Practice

We know that ‘the good GP’, partnering with a patient and their family, is the cornerstone of an effective health system. This is known and proven – the evidence is well established and growing. But where is the evidence that the government (or our representative bodies) are prepared to walk the talk? Recognition and support […]

The five principles behind the world’s most efficient health systems

The five principles behind the world’s most efficient health systems

Some nations pay half what others do for healthcare and yet get the same or better outcomes. How? Dr Mark Britnell has worked in more than 60 countries, and has seen crucial patterns in the way that healthcare is managed, delivered and funded He is head of healthcare, UK and Europe, at KPMG, and is […]

How safe is your prescribing?

How safe is your prescribing?

We know that there is a large gap between the evidence of how medications should be used, and what happens in practice. It is estimated that between 2 and 3% of hospital admissions in Australia are medication related. What can we do about it? In a study published this month in the MJA, Gillian Caughey […]

Identifying Most Valuable Care

Identifying Most Valuable Care

What do the top performing family practices do better than the rest? The Peterson Center on Healthcare identified 11 ‘bright spot’ primary care practices across the US – teams that deliver high quality care at a much lower than average cost. (Article is here) They identified 10 features that these high performing sites had in […]

I work for the Canterbury Health System

We aspire to have a health system that works ‘as one’. I was told last week that GPs, allied health and specialist doctors in Canterbury, NZ, may all well say “Hello, I work for the Canterbury Health System”. This would imply that they do feel that their care is joined up. Does this happen in […]

Innovation as Usual

We are all keen to engage our team in their second job – improving their work. We would love them to come up with innovative and creative solutions that benefit our practice and our patients. Somewhat paradoxically, rather than encouraging our team to adopt a ‘blue sky’ approach, we would get better results if we […]

Arthroscopy for degenerative meniscal tears

Arthroscopy for degenerative meniscal tears in middle aged patients is a common procedure. Does it help? No, not significantly, according to a recent systematic review in the CAMJ. There was a short term functional improvement that was not considered to be a ‘minimally important difference’. There was no difference in pain (short or long term) […]