单项选择题

Text3 Sitting in the dark in his Blackpool bedsit,Harry Harper dialled 999.He told the operator that he had a bread knife at his throat and wanted to kill himself.A few years earlier,Mr Harper had been happily married and running a successful business.But after his wife committed suicide and his firm went bust,his life spiralled out of control.He started drinking and was admitted to a number of psychiatric hospitals.With little support,calling 999 became routine.Mr Harper is not alone.Many people who feel overwhelmed by their personal problems come to use the emergency services as a crutch.Data from NHS England show that around 5,000 people attend major A&E units more than 20 times each year.Some doctors nickname them"frequent flyers".Most regions have no strategy for dealing with these patients.In some places,frequent callers have been cut off from the ambulance service,or sent letters reprimanding them for wasting NHS money.Some have even been served with anti-social behaviour orders,which,whcn broken,result in jail time.Now a promising scheme aims to offer more effective help to the most frequent users,thereby reducing their reliance on the emergency services.It was started in 2013 by Rhian Monteith,then a paramedic in Blackpool,where health outcomes are among the worst in Britain.She asked local NHS managers for the names of the area's most frequently seen patients,and was handed a list of 23 people,including Mr Harper.Many,like him,were middle-aged folk with mental-health problems.Ms Monteith tried to give them a sense of"social inclusion and purpose".Often they talked about their social needs,rather than their medical symptoms.So she arranged community activities,like volunteer work,and help with practical matters such as applying for benefits.Those who often got worked up to a crisis point were taught coping mechanisms.The effect was quick and dramatic.Within months,A&E attendances,999 calls and hospital admissions all dropped by about 90%among the group.Many began to put their lives back together.The model was extended to about 300 patients in Blackpool over the following three years,saving the NHS over~2m.In 2017 it was rolled out by 36 0fEngland's 195 regional NHS commissioning groups.Implementing the programme is not without difficulty.Many of the most prolific users of A&E have no fixed address or are homeless.And they must agree to their data being shared across different govemment agencies,which is sometimes a hard sell.But the evidence so far is encouraging.The most recent winter crisis revealed just how stretched A&E departments are.Rerouting frequent flyers to the appropriate services would benefit besieged doctors and paramedics,as well as the patients themselves.31.Which of the following statement about Mr.Harper is right?

A.Hehasseverementalillness
B.Herunsabreadcompany
C.Heisalwayscalling999
D.Hiswifeismurdered
热门 试题

单项选择题
Text 1 Ruth Simmons joined Goldman Sachs's board as an outside director in January 2000;a year later she became president of Brown University.For the rest of the decade she apparently managed both roles without attracting much criticism.But by the end of 2009 Ms.Simmons was under fire for having sat on Goldman's compensation committee;how could she have let those enormous bonus payouts pass unremarked?By February the next year Ms.Simmons had left the board.The position was just taking up too much time,she said.Outside directors are supposed to serve as helpful,yet less biased,advisers on a firm's board.Having made their wealth and their reputations elsewhere,they presumably have enough independence to disagree with the chief executive's proposals.If the sky,and the share price,is falling,outside directors should be able to give advice based on having weathered their own crises.The researchers from Ohio University used a database that covered more than 10,000 firms and more than 64,000 different directors between 1989 and 2004.Then they simply checked which directors stayed from one proxy statement to the next.The most likely reason for departing a board was age,so the researchers concentrated on those“surprise”disappearances by directors under the age of 70.They found that after a surprise departure,the probability that the company will subsequently have to restate earnings increases by nearly 20%.The likelihood of being named in a federal classaction lawsuit also increases,and the stock is likely to perform worse.The effect tended to be larger for larger firms.Although a correlation between them leaving and subsequent bad performance at the firm is suggestive,it does not mean that such directors are always jumping off a sinking ship.Often they“trade up,”leaving riskier,smaller firms for larger and more stable firms.But the researchers believe that outside directors have an easier time of avoiding a blow to their reputations if they leave a firm before bad news break,even if a review of history shows they were on the board at the time any wrongdoing occurred.Firms who want to keep their outside directors through tough times may have to create incentives.Otherwise outside directors will follow the example of Ms.Simmons,once again very popular on campus.The author's attitude toward the role of outside directors is_____
A.permissive
B.positive
C.scornful
D.critical