Government policy is driving a fundamental shift of care from hospitals to more community-based settings. There is a growing expectation that this shift will be supported by the development of a network of new facilities in which primary, community and secondary care services are co-located, often referred to as polyclinics. ...
Written as a contribution to the government's current listening exercise, this paper sets out the challenges facing the NHS and identifies the reforms we believe are needed to meet these challenges. We offer suggestions for revisions to the current Health & Social Care Bill and future policy development but we ...
The King’s Fund’s Time to Think Differently programme of work aims to stimulate debate about the changes needed for health and social care to meet the challenges of the future. It aims to generate new thinking about how to address these challenges and deliver a transformation in services for patients. ...
This paper explores factors that might be driving the significant variation in use of hospital beds by patients over 65 admitted as an emergency. It considers the contribution made by patient-based (demand-side) factors, hospital (supply-side) factors, the availability of community services and resources, and broader system relationships (how care systems ...
This paper summarises presentations made at a seminar held at The King’s Fund in April 2010. The seminar brought together case studies from the NHS in England, Kaiser Permanente in California and the independent sector, as well as research evidence, to explore what has been tried and what has worked ...
Health care commissioners will need to deliver a sustainable system in the face of the most challenging financial and organisational environment seen in decades. They must shift the current emphasis on acute and episodic care towards prevention, self-care and integrated and well co-ordinated care to cope with an aging population ...