Although some of the key planks of the NHS reform programme, such as Payment by Results (PbR) and patient choice, began to take shape from 2003, it is only recently that the Department of Health has begun to publish guidance, aimed at people working within the NHS, that attempts to ...
In the past few years, rapid and significant changes have taken place in the social, political and policy environment in which health professionals and patients interact. This paper reports on the Patient Involvement Project, a King's Fund study that assessed changing relationships between health professionals and patients/clients in a changing ...
This is a report on the process evaluation undertaken as part of the King's Fund Promoting Patient Choice initiative. The report outlines: the background to the project; the purpose and method of the evaluation; findings from the seven sites (information about the application stage, the development process and the evaluation ...
This report reveals that two-thirds of the PCTs responding to the survey had not yet carried out any assessment to identify patients who might need support in making choices about which hospital to go to. A similar proportion had not commissioned any new services to support the introduction of patient ...
This publication lays out the questions the government must answer if it wants to place patient choice at the heart of a taxpayer-funded health care system, including how extra costs will be met, whether patients are willing and able to exercise choice in their own best interests, and what kinds ...
Working group included Keith Palmer and Rebecca Rosen of the King's Fund. and Recent changes in the NHS have triggered significant expansion in the involvement of independent and voluntary sectors in the delivery of services. How can this involvement be developed to ensure quality of care for patients and to enrich choice? This question was addressed by a small independent working group, commissioned ...
In December 2006, the Department of Health issued its second 'operating framework', The NHS in England: The operating framework for 2007/08, which provides a set of rules and guidance for NHS organisations in England for the year ahead. Aimed primarily at managers and clinical staff, the operating framework for 2007/8 ...
Attempts to give more choice to users of public sector services has been a major theme of the Labour government's public sector modernisation programme. Policies have been developed in health care, education and social housing that aim to give users a greater choice of publicly or privately owned providers, and ...
'Free choice' - allowing patients being referred for non-urgent treatment to choose a hospital anywhere in England - begins in the NHS in England in April 2008. It is another milestone in a policy that aims, among other things, to use consumer pressure to improve the quality of hospital services ...