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How Lean is your Emergency Department?
Modern Emergency Departments face a constant challenge to deliver quality of care to patients, while at the same time meeting government performance targets. More and more they are turning to the Lean principles to help them in this challenge: to identify and eliminate waste and inefficiency in their service and maximise the level of service provided to their patients. Atos Consulting have introduced the Lean process into numerous NHS Organisations, Including Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust, South Central SHA and Milton Keynes PCT, Find out more in this jointly published article in the Emergency Medicine Journal...
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The effect of the global financial crisis on low-income countries
Evidence is increasing that the global recession is having a particularly strong effect on the world’s poorer countries, which have fewer ways to protect themselves. The World Bank has predicted that 53 million more people will fall into poverty in 2009 (defined as subsistence living on less than 1.25 dollars a day), which comes on top of “soaring food and fuel prices in recent years". Read more about The effect of the global financial crisis on low-income countries...
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New Thinking Needed for the Hard Road Ahead
The 2009 Budget on 22 April confirmed the worrying state of public finances in the UK and has major implications for spending in the public sector over coming years. The growth in the National Debt and contraction of the economy will eventually mean that either tax will be raised or public spending reduced, or possibly both. Reduction in public spending will mean that Government Departments will need to do more than achieve efficiency savings. Read more about New Thinking Needed for the Hard Road Ahead...
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Reducing IT costs without destroying value
Organisations are continually under pressure to control the amount they spend on IT, but never more so than in the current downturn as organisations look to curtail investment programmes and reduce costs. However IT cost reductions should always be approached with value in mind; if cutting IT costs destroys business value, then the reductions will be a false economy. Read more about Reducing IT costs without destroying value...
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Rising to the challenge of the Operational Efficiency Programme
The Operational Efficiency Programme (OEP) puts additional pressure on Government. Senior private sector advisors are tasked with helping Government find a further £30bn of savings across a number of cross cutting initiatives. Again, there will be more focus on the frontline, and streamlining of the back office, but additionally, delving deeper into other areas such as asset management and property which could yield further cost savings. Can Government step up to this latest challenge? Read more about Rising to the challenge of the Operational Efficiency Programme...
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The Evolution of Lean Thinking in the NHS
Lean thinking is relatively new to the NHS but it is evolving quickly. It started being used to resolve specific problems in hospitals but is now being applied across the boundaries of organisations to improve and redesign complex care pathways. NHS managers recognise that for Lean programmes to be successful, current-state organisational design, change management and knowledge management tools must be adapted to Lean principles and objectives. Read more about The Evolution of Lean Thinking in the NHS...
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Identity Management - Can the privacy conflicts be resolved?
The identity management debate has suggested that individuals are unnecessarily losing their privacy through technologically enabled surveillance such as ID cards. However, Atos believes there is a solution that can maintain individual privacy yet enable new methods of identification. Atos’ vision for a secure ID scheme shows that these two objectives need not conflict. Read more about Identity Management...
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Development Assistance in Fragile States
Fragile states suffer disproportionately from problems such as conflict, poverty and risk of state collapse. The latter has the potential for adverse national, regional and even global consequences. The use of development assistance to help tackle the problems faced by fragile states is increasingly moving up international and donor agendas. Yet working in such states provides a unique set of challenges and difficulties that requires a different approach to that taken in a typical low income country. Read more about Development Assistance in Fragile States...
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