Two years ago health ministers in the Czech Republic decided to focus on the financial sustainability of health systems during their six months at the EU presidency helm. Was this foresight? Did the ministers know what the bankers did not- that economic Armageddon was round the corner? Either way, the financial crisis was certainly concentrating minds at their recent conference on how countries can continue to meet their rising healthcare costs. more…

It is very good to see Changing Faces nominated as the BMA charity of the year, both because it is an outstanding organisation and because the nomination recognises a reality of which too many people are unaware.

I know Changing Faces well. Run by its founder, the indefatigable James Partridge, it supports and represents people with disfigurements to the face, hand or body. It is imaginative, innovative, collaborative, and a model of good governance. more…

In October last year we announced the UK Forum on Health Care Priority Setting at the 7th meeting of the International Society on Priorities in Health Care. The forum is funded by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement and is organised by the Institute of Health and Society at Newcastle University. more…

Ole Frithjof Norheim and Cam Donaldson (pictured) sum up lessons learned from the 7th International conference on priority setting in health care. more…

I have recently been reading a report on ethical issues in public health from the Nuffield Foundation on Bioethics. It is a lovely document, subtle and interrogative, delightfully rich, as all good thought should be, in unanswered questions. more…

With NHS budget increases levelling off pre-credit crunch and now with the crunch itself, there has never been a more important time, in recent years at least, to be thinking about how to manage scarce healthcare resources for maximum gain to patients and the wider community. more…

Banks, insurance companies and home owners have already fallen victim to the US financial crisis. Now healthcare is under fire. Last week, the state of Hawaii announced that it was ending Keiki Care, the only universal health insurance program for children in the United States. In the face of a projected deficit of $900 million by 2011, Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle was forced to cut the program just seven months after she had signed it into being. On the national stage, the presidential candidates have refused to explicitly shelve any one of their proposals for office, including health reform. But Hawaii’s decision augurs badly. more…

Last week I found myself at a conference on multidisciplinary teamwork in the NHS, and one of the keynote speakers observed that the main benefit of the “credit crunch” is that bankers have overtaken healthcare professionals as the most hated profession in the country. The media is full of stories of doom, as the banking system lurches from one crisis to the next. However the comment got me thinking about the wider health impact of both the current financial situation, and the recession we seem to be entering.

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