The policy of offering patients a choice in where they receive hospital treatment was intended to create competition between providers, encouraging efficiency and responsiveness to patients’ preferences and ultimately to drive up the quality of care. So has the policy met those aims? Since January 2006, patients requiring a referral ...
This review assesses how far the investment and accompanying reforms since 1997 have transformed the NHS in England into a high-performing health system. The review focuses on England because health policy has now diverged from that in the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It has drawn on ...
The government’s End of Life Care Strategy set out to improve the care that patients receive at the end of their life and to give them meaningful choice about where they are cared for and where they die. Implementation of the strategy has proved challenging, however, for a number of ...
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. ...
The King's Fund response to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence consultation on new indicators for the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF). The King's Fund broadly supports the introduction of each of the new indicators, particularly the six mental illness indicators as there is strong evidence of the ...
The government is committed to improving the quality of care, and as part of this commitment they aim to make more information available to the public about the performance of trusts. Providers of NHS services are now required to publish quality accounts – reports for the public on the quality ...
Continuity of care contributes importantly to patient experience, whether it's continuity of a relationship, by seeing the same GP, or management continuity, that coordinates an individual’s care across the wider health care system. However, continuity is not monitored or incentivised in the same way as other aspects of good practice. ... and This paper was commissioned by The King’s Fund to inform the panel of the Inquiry into the Quality of General Practice in England. The views expressed are those of the authors and not of the panel.
In 2009, The King’s Fund and the Burdett Trust for Nursing set out to ‘bring the ward to the board’, emphasising the role of the nurse executive in ensuring that boards are as fully engaged with the clinical quality agenda as they are with financial performance. As leaders of the ...
Securing good care for more people: options for reform proposes new, fairer funding arrangements for adult social care, a review of the current settlement for older people and a long-term staged approach to reform based on political consensus. While demonstrating that the cost of the social care system is set ...