NHS spends more than £300m on consultancy services

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11041845

Nigel Edwards, acting chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: "Any spending of taxpayers' money has to be justified, and the NHS has been asked by successive governments to perform tasks for which internal expertise was not present or needed to be developed. Dismissing all this spending as wasteful is unfounded."

IT and Human Resources were the biggest spend areas - the NHS Chief Executive argues that there isn't the specialist knowledge in the service to meet the needs, and that it would also be wasteful to employ people permanently for "one off" specialist roles.  The RCN reply with "shocking waste" etc etc whilstthe opposition retort:

the NHS needs good managers. By wiping away the expertise currently in primary care trusts, [Lansley] is opening the door to consultancy firms

Is spending on consultancy a necessary evil? a clever way of hiding staffing costs in a service beset by targets and spending cuts? a sensible way of bringing in the staffing and expertise needed at the right time? Lazy management? all of the above. Discuss.....

Use of Social Media in Health Care - Report by Deloitte in U.S.

• Issue Brief — Social Networks in Health Care: Communication, collaboration and insights « ResourceShelf

  tags: socialmedia HSC

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Some time ago I blogged about how reluctant the NHS is to let its staff use social media but also how so many NHS organisations are beginning to appear on Twitter and Facebook, etc.

Interesting then to see this report from Deloitte in the US about how social media is gaining respectability and more widespread use in health care there.

I am particularly interested as I am very keen on teaching Health and Social Care students how to use these tools - Twitter, Google Sites, Wikis and Blogs are all going to feature in my leadership and management modules this year. So now I can justify this as more than just "technology for its own sake" - students hoping to be employed in the health and social care sectors need to be social media literate.

A Practical Guide to using Social Media in your Job - an overview presentation

http://janeknight.typepad.com/pick/2010/07/a-practical-guide-to-using-social-media-in-your-job-an-overview-presentation.html

PLE BCN July 2010

PLEBCN: a conference with a difference:

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2010/07/how-we-share-our-ideas-ple_bcn

What's it all about?

Jordi Adell's introduction http://dotsub.com/view/7023a3f5-5463-4396-aa33-3b78f1557a48

Ismael Peña-López'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-3RCvE61co


Alec Couros' http://tinyurl.com/2docaad

and finally from Graham Atwell http://slidesha.re/cIJ3tx

Partnership working: policy and practice - Google Books

Partnership working: policy and practice - Google Books

A useful resource for the session on Collaboration across organisations and interagency working