General practitioners make over 9 million referrals each year, triggering many billions of pounds of expenditure. There is also significant variation in the quality and rate of referral between GPs and GP practices. As the NHS faces a prospective funding gap of £14-£20 billion and GPs take the lead for ...
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 ...
In early 2009 The King’s Fund conducted a survey of primary care trusts (PCTs) in England, examining the use of external support for commissioning, and eliciting views on the world class commissioning programme. The survey revealed that PCTs are increasingly turning to external organisations, and the private sector in particular, ...
Since internal markets were created in the NHS, commissioners have purchased health care on behalf of patients and the public from a variety of competing providers. Commissioning was intended to drive improvements in the quality, accessibility and cost-effectiveness of services, but has so far largely failed to achieve these objectives. ...