In the following video, Deborah Cohen, an investigative journalist with the British Medical Journal, explains some of the things to look out for when asking questions about the NHS:
Author Archives: Paul Bradshaw
Data: Freedom of information request statistics for NHS Trusts (as of 23/10/2011)
Carl Plant has blogged about gathering data on what FOI requests have been made to NHS trusts using the website What Do They Know. He writes:
“I’ll share the datatable so that others can see how FOI requests are being asked of NHS Trusts and also show the top 10 results (in descending order) for:
- Successful requests
- Long overdue requests
- Rejected requests”
Links: NHS payoffs and middle class drinking
“The use of “interim” management in the NHS was justified by several of the organisations as solving specific short-term problems while long term plans were drawn up.
“But many of the arrangements uncovered by The Sunday Telegraphlasted for more than a year, despite the rocketing bills.”
“The report, by 2020 Health, a centre-right think tank, says many middle class drinkers are not aware of the risks of their evening tipple, with couples who share a bottle of wine over dinner most evenings unwittingly increasing their chances of cancer and strokes.”
AUDIO: Pharmacies competing with NHS dispensaries
You And Yours reports today on private pharmacies using the Freedom of Information Act to identify the most profitable regions in Scotland to set up shop – leading to the closure of practice-based dispensaries.
Sadly there’s no information online other than the full broadcast, but there’s some background on BBC News Scotland: Continue reading
Data: patient numbers by GP practice in Birmingham East and North
As part of an investigation into GP surgery sizes in Birmingham I’ve collected some initial data on GP sizes from Birmingham East and North Primary Care Trust.
The data was gathered through submitting an FOI request after direct approaches took too long.
The response to the FOI request with a link to the spreadsheet is available here.
It gives patient numbers for GP surgeries as of the end of June: these vary wildly from over 37,000 at the biggest surgery to a few hundred at the smallest.
Sadly the key information – how many GPs are employed at each surgery to respond to those patients – was not supplied. The accompanying email did mention 367 GPs on the medical performers list, which averages out at 4.7 per surgery – but it’s also not clear how many of those are employed full time or, indeed, practising at all.
I am now waiting for the remainder of the data requested.
UPDATE: I’ve just discovered a PDF with GP practice data for the whole of England on the Prescription Pricing Division’s FOI disclosure pages. Seems that may have been a better avenue than individual PCTs. Now, to extract that data from the PDF…
In the meantime, here’s a quick visualisation of the data using Google Fusion Tables. Those in the top quartile of surgeries based on patient numbers have a large red marker; those in the third quartile (above average) have a large yellow marker. Those in the second quartile (below average) have a small green dot; and those in the bottom quartile have a small blue dot. It doesn’t really tell you anything other than where to look, and that possibly there are more large surgeries in the north than the south.