Someone once asked, "How do you like your HMO?", to which I replied, "Compared to what?", since I wasn't enthralled at all by their policies and annual increases in co-payments. Then this just came in from England as an "attitude adjuster"! I like my HMO a lot better now. Robert
"* Op waiting times 'will be cut' Patients have been promised that waiting times for operations will be slashed as the Government announced inflation-busting increases for the NHS. Health authorities are to get an average increase of 8.5 per cent from April next year, amounting to around £29million more each. Health Secretary Alan Milburn said the maximum wait for treatment would be cut from 18 months to 15 months by spring 2002. And within a year men with testicular cancer, children with cancer, and leukaemia sufferers will be treated inside a month. Mr Milburn said: "These new maximum waiting times are still too long, but they represent the first instalment of real progress." Source: Staff reporter Useful link: http://www.nhs.50.nhs.uk/ * Hospitals in firing line The government is to send in a "hit squad" to one of the UK's leading heart hospitals following a highly critical report. Health minister John Denham described the Oxford Heart Centre at the John Radcliffe Hospital as "dysfunctional". The report will blame management failings for both poor standards of care and lack of supervision of inexperienced doctors. The Commission for Health Improvement, a government watchdog set up to monitor standards in NHS hospitals, will be sent to Oxford to supervise improvement measures. In addition, the CHI has published a hard-hitting report into "serious service failures" at North Lakeland NHS Trust in Cumbria and Carmarthenshire NHS Trust in Llanelli. Source: Press release Useful link: http://www.open.gov.uk/doh/nhs.htm
