Health & Social Care

Different targets and better joint working between health and social care agencies would improve the ambulance service, says this week’s Frontliner

After nearly 22 months, the Commons select committees’ first elected chairs have had plenty of time to size up their Whitehall counterparts. Joshua Chambers asked them how the departments they watch have been performing

Departmental select committee chairs have provided mixed reviews of the departments they scrutinise for a Civil Service World Special Report, which has found that 40 per cent of them are dissatisfied with departments’ responses to their reports.

The civil service has to develop specialist policymaking skills, says Lord Darzi – and that requires topical professional qualifications

A doctor says the NHS’s priorities are all wrong: pettifogging rules are rigorously enforced, but the Working Time Directive is pretty much ignored

Whitehall should better coordinate policy across health, social housing and social care services, while local commissioning bodies should integrate social care with healthcare commissioning, according to a report published today by the Commons health committee.

Frontline: Forensic medical examiner A doctor working with the police worries about the effect of outsourcing on the care of vulnerable people

The NHS reforms set out in the government’s Health and Social Care Bill are “disrupting and distracting” the effort to make £20bn of savings over the next four years, according to a critical report published yesterday by the Commons Health Committee.

After 15 years in the civil service – including a stint as the cabinet secretary’s communications chief – Siobhan Benita is making the leap into politics. Matt Ross meets the would-be London mayor as she kicks off her campaign.

In 2000, Tim Kelsey launched the private business Dr Foster to produce a league table on hospital performance. Now he’s been hired by the PM to push the transparency agenda throughout Whitehall. Matt Ross meets him.

Sian Jarvis has spent more than a decade overseeing communications for the Department of Health. She tells Joshua Chambers about public health policy – and communicating controversial reforms to the NHS.

This week’s interviewee says the coach of NHS reform is heading broadly in the right direction, but wishes the driver would take more care