Monthly Archives: August 2016

Stick it in

We recently drew attention to the UKAS customer satisfaction survey.  What a fantastic organization!…think those who bothered to return the questionnaires.  Do their own customers rate them so highly?  Did they rate them lower before they were accredited? Doug Powell … Continue reading

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A Decade of Reversal: An Analysis of 146 Contradicted Medical Practices

Prasad et al. have published an analysis of 146 medical practices that had to change when they were shown to have no benefits.  A large proportion of treatments remain of unknown effectiveness or may be harmful.   For this reason … Continue reading

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The Dark Side of Tight Financial Control: Causes and Remedies of Dysfunctional Employee Behaviors

The Dark Side of Tight Financial Control: Causes and Remedies of Dysfunctional Employee Behaviors Goebel, S. & E. Weißenberger, B. Schmalenbach Bus Rev (2016) 17: 69. doi:10.1007/s41464-016-0005-8 Abstract Following recent corporate accounting scandals and governance failures, there has been a renewed … Continue reading

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The Freeman – Mad Science

The Summer issue of The Freeman presents a collection of articles on mad science. It describes the dangers of giving control to an expert elite and illustrates it with example ideologies such as Darwinian eugenics that had to wait for the … Continue reading

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Straw poll

If you knew ten people with experience of ISO accreditation you could conduct a straw poll now. See if nine out of ten really think what was reported to UKAS in their customer satisfaction survey.  Or do they fail to … Continue reading

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>90% say accreditation delivers benefits…but…

Authors employed by bodies including the US Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) have written that >90% of public health departments the PHAB accredits report benefits that might have been expected. This sounds a lot like ISO accreditation although the details of the … Continue reading

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“no treatment regimen was identified as having an improved clinical outcome”

Accreditation relies on auditing for total compliance with SOPs.  Inspection of this assures quality.  Even when it doesn’t. Drs Williams and Brindle reported another type of audit and showed wide variation for the treatment of an infective condition. Journal of … Continue reading

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