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 ...
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 ...
'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 ...
The King's Fund's response to the Department of Health's consultation on options for the future of Payment by Results (PbR), investigating whether ambitions for PbR might be mutually exclusive, and whether, as a single policy lever, PbR can be expected to help achieve any or all of these ambitions.
Evidence from the King's Fund responding to the Health Select Committee's inquiry into potential changes to primary care trusts' functions and numbers arising from the Department of Health document, Commissioning a Patient-Led NHS.
This paper is a response by the King's Fund to the report prepared by the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England, Sir Liam Donaldson, on medical regulation, entitled Good Doctors, Safer Patients, and the Department of Health's review on the regulation of non-medical health care professions.