In this report, we focus on what needs to be done to strengthen commissioning in the NHS, through an analysis of the problems with current commissioning arrangements. We begin by examining what is meant by ‘commissioning’ in the English NHS.
This slide deck presents the fourth and final year of results from an annual survey of GPs and practice managers in six CCGs across the country. The survey explores how GP attitudes towards clinical commissioning have evolved since their launch in 2013. The results show that over the past three ...
Cancer survival rates in England are improving, but they still lag behind those in the best-performing countries in the world. The current government has identified cancer survival rates as an area for improvement and the cancer strategy commits to saving an additional 5,000 lives by 2015, but how can these ...
This guide sets out some basic facts on the health of England's population, including the main drivers of health, how it varies and is expressed in inequalities, and relevant comparisons with other countries.
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 aims to probe what it sees as a woefully under-explored area: the differences between the United Kingdom's four separate health systems. These systems, it argues, are diverging in terms of structures, management approaches, and the way social care relates to health.
This report, published jointly with the Nuffield Trust, looks at the current state of social care services for older people in England, through a combination of national data and interviews with local authorities, NHS and private providers, Healthwatch and other groups. It considers the impact of cuts in local authority ...
This report takes mental health services for adults in England as a case study and examines the relevance of this experience to current policy. It focuses on understanding the dramatic changes to mental health services and the factors that enabled that change to happen.
This paper reviews the impact of three approaches to NHS reform in England since the late 1990s: targets and performance management, inspection and regulation, and competition and choice. It argues for a fundamental shift in how the NHS is reformed, learning from what has worked (and what has not) in ...
Medical revalidation of doctors became a statutory obligation for all employing organisations in 2012, but its origins stretch back to 2000. In that period, the NHS has undergone many changes and been scrutinised by several reviews. It was against this shifting context that The King's Fund carried out a qualitative ...