Understanding and managing variation should assist policy makers, managers and clinicians to align the capacity of health care systems and organisational processes with desired results.
It indicates poor collaboration between managers and clinicians to ensure alerts are propagated and systems overhauled.
Immediately we started monthly conferences for our 250 top staff, including ward managers and clinicians.
"The really powerful effect of publishing information is how managers and clinicians respond, not the public," he said, adding that "standards in quality have to be the responsibility of managers and clinicians.
But despite many examples of outstanding leadership training for both managers and clinicians, the need vastly outstrips supply.
They will help primarily by releasing managers and clinicians from the palsied grip of Whitehall.
It will allow managers and clinicians of the new hospitals to get on with what really matters on the ground.
He emphasised that the board is sincere in its desire to let go and to allow space and opportunity for managers and clinicians to innovate and excel.
The difficulty is: are politicians going to give managers and clinicians the headroom to shut down institutions in the run-up to an election?
Overall the mandate sets clear objectives, which broadly reflect the priorities that managers and clinicians are already pursuing in the interests of patients.
The first NHS mandate, which sets out the government's expectations of the health service to the NHS Commissioning Board, hardly represents freedom for managers and clinicians but it at least has the feel of moving to an open prison.
