Category Archives: NHS

UKAS tries to catch up with COVID-19

Fear Not!  You’ll realize by now that all the risk-based thinking and opportunity-spotting that the ISO requires has failed catastrophically.  Everybody’s pretending they didn’t see COVID-19 coming.  It’s a lie.  A number of experts foresaw something similar. The British Government … Continue reading

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Coronavirus relaxes accreditation for a while

National chief scientists issued an NHS joint statement Supporting the healthcare science workforce response to coronavirus… (publications approval reference: 001559) on 30th March 2020…   Notice, “They must bear in mind that healthcare scientists may need to depart, possibly significantly, … Continue reading

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Risk-based thinking – it’s risky not to understand the mathematics of risk (and randomness)

Dr Melvyn Langford explains how the US Department of Defense (DoD) invented the 5×5 risk matrix in the 1980s. The methodology uses ordinal numbers (which are only for ranking) as if they are suitable for calculations.  It is misleading, meaningless and … Continue reading

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UKAS now “a partner to Government”

In a BMTA interview with retired chief executive of UKAS, Paul Stennett MBE, we learn, What is most satisfying is that UKAS is now seen as being a partner to Government, helping to deliver their regulatory agenda and in many cases … Continue reading

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Impact of the Care Quality Commission on provider performance: room for improvement?

The King’s Fund report referred to in the previous BMJ article can be downloaded here: Impact of the Care Quality Commission on provider performance: room for improvement? Its long summary includes, What are the implications of our findings? We also tried … Continue reading

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CQC inspections have “little measurable impact” on services, analysis finds

The BMJ has reported a lack of evidence that the inspection regime of the Care Quality Commission improves services. Can we now expect similar scrutiny of UKAS’s inspections of pathology services? We might predict that those employed in the lab … Continue reading

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Scott’s parabola gives hope

Scott described the growth and death of fads in surgery: It’s not so different from the curve based on real data published by Walsh which observed the fate of other management fads: Walshe, K. Pseudoinnovation: the development and spread of … Continue reading

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ISO 9001’s ongoing decline

Chris Paris has evaluated the 2016 ISO report on ISO 9001’s uptake.  Read his analysis here. The ISO hasn’t bothered to correct misleading figures designed the inflate the standard’s popularity but it continues its secular trend of decline. China and … Continue reading

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Essential Services Laboratories

If you’ve read John Seddon you will know that the front office – back office arrangement will be a disaster.  It may have been sold promising economies of scale and a new computer system, neither of which will work out … Continue reading

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Inside the minds of pathology reformers

Reforms to pathology services according to the Carter Report are still doing poorly.  The cover-up of the failures is working better: Pathology Networks The morning session provided attendees with different perspectives on Pathology Networks; appropriately titled ‘Networks – a blessing or a curse’. … Continue reading

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