Home » ajc healthcare - making sense of healthcare reform

ajc healthcare
making sense of healthcare reform

Alan Jones is an independent health policy analyst and adviser. He writes and presents widely on the New NHS. Alan spent some 20 years in the Pharmaceutical Industry in a variety of sales, marketing and business development roles including some 10 years at Glaxo Wellcome UK where he was responsible for relationship building between Glaxo Wellcome and the Department of Health, and in developing a corporate understanding of current NHS policy initiatives and their likely implications and impact on the business.

Alan is also managing consultant at ajc healthcare, which specialises in NHS policy issues for both the Pharmaceutical Industry and the NHS and aiming to support organisations in steering the right strategic course through a rapidly changing NHS environment.

Alan has a Masters in Business Administration and is a fully qualified teacher - before joining the Pharmaceutical Industry, he spent a decade teaching and lecturing in colleges, schools and universities in the UK, the United States and West Africa. He is also a reviewer with the NHS National Co-ordinating Centre for Health Technology Assessment (NCCHTA) and was a member of the UK Local Organising Committee for the International Society for Technology Assessment in Health Care (ISTAHC) held in Edinburgh in June 1999.

ajc healthcare articles

NHS Review - Payment by Results
(Date published: 1 May 2005)

In this issue of NHS Review we have a look at the new financial flows system being introduced into the NHS with some implications for sales teams - but we also continue to keep you up-to-date on recent developments elsewhere in the NHS. Also the final report of the House of Commons Health Select Committee's Inquiry into the pharmaceutical industry was published last month and we definitely have something to say about that in this specially extended addition!

NHS / Pharmaceutical Industry Partnerships
(Published May 05)

I couldn't help but notice recently that Nottingham City PCT had advertised in the HSJ classified ads for a Pharmaceutical Industry Liaison Manager. Now what was all this about one wondered? Blurb from the advertisement included, "Nottingham City PCT has adopted a strategic approach to working in partnership with the pharmaceutical Industry.

NHS Review - The new Community Pharmacy Contract
(Date published: 1 April 2005)

April 1st marked the beginning of the new financial year for the NHS, 2005/6. On this date many new initiatives kicked in, including GP practice-based commissioning and the new community pharmacist contract. In this issue of NHS Review we will have a look this new contract and some implications for sales teams but we also continue to keep you up-to-date on recent developments around managing long term conditions (LTC) as well as the latest plans for the NHS. Next month's issue of NHS Review will have payment by results (PbR) as its main focus.

NHS Review - NHS Foundation Trusts
(Date published: 1 March 2005)

In the last issue of NHS Review we had a look in detail at some of the recent developments around managing long term conditions (LTC) - this of course of great interest to primary care teams involved with asthma, COPD, diabetes, CHD, depression, etc. This month we take a look at NHS Foundation Trust (FT) Hospitals - this clearly more likely to be of interest to secondary care teams - but again we will pick up the latest developments around LTC. FTs and LTC are but just two major NHS initiatives 'on the boil' at the moment and next month we will have a look in a bit of detail at the new community pharmacist contract, which kicks in then. This is also briefly mentioned below.

NHS Review - Managing Long Term Conditions
(Date published: 1 February 2005)

Chronic disease management (along with public health) has recently leapt up the NHS charts and has begun to dominate the whole healthcare landscape. In fact the new approach to CDM will be one of the hottest topics in the NHS going forward and ongoing developments here need to be factored into 2005 business plans. In this first issue of NHS Review we briefly review the recent history on health policy around CDM (increasingly being referred to as long-term conditions) as well as the very latest news on this important area.

Influencing the Influencers and the NHS Confederation
(Date published: 21 January 2005)

Though 2005, the industry NHS customer base can be expected to continue to broaden. Here Alan Jones begins an occasional look-see at some of the UK's key Influencing Centres. As we come to the end of 2004 and start to move into 2005, companies continue to work out the best ways of dealing with PCTs, SHAs and Health Boards in the never ending story of healthcare reform musical chairs. But in any serious attempt at trying to proactively managing the external environment there are many other 'national influencing centres' to be borne in mind. Companies will of course be prioritising NICE, the Scottish Medicines Consortium and the All-Wales Medicines Strategy Group and will have put resources aside for this next year. But there are many many more! So how do we know which of these other National Influencing Centres we should be deploying resources on? Are their measures one can use to gauge their importance and significance? Should we be 'mapping' out all these other various groups and whether we should interact with them or not? Some very good questions perhaps to ponder through 2005. In this series we will be attempting to map out some of these for you and this month we begin with the NHS Confederation.

Will Sir Ian be able to fix it? (NICE guidence / guidelines)
(Date published: May 2004)

As we go to press, the count on NICE technology appraisals reaches the high seventies and the guidelines explosion has begun. Over 20 clinical practice guidelines have now been published, 20 more will be produced over the next 12 months and there are also about another 40 other guidelines in simultaneous development. NICE says that this is the 'largest guideline development programme of any healthcare system in the world'. It is not surprising therefore that the output of NICE this year is expected to be almost double that of 2003! But this mountain of guidance will surely place a huge and significant burden on the NHS.

Deconstructed Genes - genetics and genomics
(Date published: 26 February 2004)

If it slipped you by, a White Paper on genetics was published in the middle of last year. The NHS appears to have woken up, says Alan Jones. Advances in genetics and genomics still continue to receive a very high press profile. The reasons are not hard to find. 2003 marked the fiftieth anniversary of Crick and Watson's ground-breaking discovery of the structure of DNA and it was also the year in which the sequencing of the human genome - the blueprint of life - was finally completed. The complete map of our chromosomes was elucidated for the first time.

Prescribing Pots - Have pressures on PCT prescribing budgets now reached crisis point
(Date published: 23 February 2004)

If PCT Directors of Finance were hoping for some relief from rapidly rising prescribing costs in the new financial year, they are surely set for a major disappointment. More and more NSFs and NICE guidance appear to be fuelling rampant prescribing inflation and NHS folk are now complaining that the prescribing pot is almost dry! In fact prescribing costs will likely to be the bane of PCT Finance Directors this year and, along with their Prescribing Advisers, they will be actively looking at ways to try and control this surge in costs.

In Defence of the Realm - Dying for drugs
(Date published: 20 January 2004)

Earlier this year a 'baggage' volcano erupted on a grand scale. Has the dust yet settled? Alan Jones revisits. Following shortly after Channel 4's rather inflammatory documentary Dying for Drugs, the BMJ at the end of May ran a wholly negative 'theme' issue on the Industry, essentially saying what 'naughty boys' companies were. According to the BMJ, doctors and drug companies are 'entwined in an embrace of avarice and excess, which is distorting medical information and patient care.' These comments were accompanied by a whole series of articles looking at the 'entangled' relationships between the Industry and doctors, as well as the way the industry reports its clinical trial results. It was all there - the use of third parties by companies to 'spin' their messages, the 'abuse' of patient organisations, industry funding corrupting medical journals, 'conference tourism,' bribery, bias in clinical trials, undue pressure on GPs, etc, etc..... The key issue of course is always what should companies do in response to this kind of stuff.

Home | Contact | Healthcare sales jobs | ABPI articles | NHS articles | NHS News | Pharmaceutical News