The aim of this report is to provoke and encourage thinking about the wide range of ways in which patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) data can be used to inform decisions. It draws on Bupa’s example to discuss how providers can use PROMs data to improve clinical performance. It also offers ...
The need to wait for health care has been a feature of the NHS since its inception. When Labour came to power in 1997, total numbers of patients waiting stood at 1.3 million: the highest since the NHS began in 1948. The government announced its 'war on waiting' and pledged ...
Variations in health care in the NHS are a persistent and ubiquitous problem. But which variations are acceptable or warranted – for example, variations driven by clinical need and informed patient choice – and which are not? The important question is how to promote ‘good’ variation and minimise ‘bad’ variation. ...
As part of its work looking at the pressures being faced by the NHS, The King’s Fund published its first Quarterly Monitoring Report in April 2011. This is the fourth report, and it aims to
provide a real-time update on how the NHS is coping as it tackles the evolving ...
As part of its work on the pressures faced by the NHS, The King’s Fund published its first Quarterly Monitoring Report in April this year. This is the third report and it aims to provide a
regular update on how the NHS is coping as it tackles the evolving reform ...
Many NHS hospitals will struggle to deliver productivity improvements essential to maintaining quality and avoiding significant cuts to services, according to our latest quarterly monitoring report. This is the second quarterly monitoring report produced by the Fund as we aim to provide a regular update on how the NHS is ...
Over the next few years the NHS faces two unprecedented challenges: coping with the tightest funding settlement for decades and implementing top-to-bottom reforms of the system. The broad goal of both the productivity and reform challenges is to improve NHS performance and hence the quality of patient care. But both ...
In March 2005, the King's Fund published An Independent Audit of the NHS under Labour (1997-2005), which included an analysis of where extra NHS funding had been spent. This briefing provides an update to the question "where's the money going?" It analyses new data recently released by the Department of ...
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 ...
This report, the second part of 'The NHS under the coalition government', looks at how well the NHS has performed under the coalition government. The report acknowledges that assessing the performance of any health service is an inexact science for many reasons, but using routinely available data, the report creates ...
The unprecedented slowdown in the growth of NHS funding in England since 2010 has meant that the NHS has had to pursue the most ambitious programme of productivity improvement since its foundation in order to close the gap between need and available funding.
This report describes how six trusts have been ...
This report is based on a literature review and stakeholder consultation carried out by The King’s Fund on behalf of the National Institute for Health Research and the Social Care Institute for Excellence. The report provides an overview of current knowledge about the environmental impacts of health and social care ...
In the past 50 years, spending on the NHS in the United Kingdom has increased from 3.4 per cent to 8.2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). If the next 50 years follow the same trajectory, the United Kingdom could be spending nearly one-fifth of its entire GDP on ...
Investment in the NHS has increased significantly under the Blair government. Spending will soon reach the EU average, but when we catch up with our European neighbours, what then? Assuming that pressures to spend more will continue, but that marginal health returns on extra investment are likely to diminish, this ...
As part of our work tracking, analysing and commentating on the changes and challenges facing the NHS, The King’s Fund published its first Quarterly Monitoring Report in April 2011. Just
over a year on, this fifth report aims to take stock of what has happened over the past year – ...
This new analysis of data for the final quarter of 2012/13 shows that nearly six per cent of patients waited four hours or longer in A&E departments, the highest level since 2004. It shows that 313,000 patients (5.9 per cent) spent four hours or more in A&E in the period ...
The King’s Fund published its first Quarterly monitoring report in April 2011 as part of its work to track, analyse and comment on the changes and challenges the health and social care system
is facing. This is the 10th report and aims to take stock of what has happened over ...
The King’s Fund published its first Quarterly Monitoring Report in April 2011 as part of its work to track, analyse and comment on the changes and challenges the health and care system is facing. This is the seventh report and provides an update on how the NHS is coping as ...
The King’s Fund published its first Quarterly Monitoring Report in April 2011 as part of its work to track, analyse and comment on the changes and challenges the health and care system is
facing. This is the ninth report and aims to take stock of what has happened over the ...
Based on a review of the English NHS experience of Payment by Results (PbR) and international experience of similar, activity-based payment systems, this report identifies five general lessons about payment systems, draws some conclusions about whether our current Payment by Results system is fit for purpose in view of current ...
The Wanless review Securing our Future Health, published by the Treasury in 2002, concluded that the United Kingdom would need to spend substantially more on health care and that fundamental reform would be needed to enable those resources to be used effectively. Five years on, The King's Fund has commissioned ...
The primary task of the health service is to improve people's health. A fundamental goal within this is to improve patients' health-related quality of life (HRQoL). But, while measuring and monitoring many aspects of its performance, the NHS does not routinely measure the impact of its care on patients' HRQoL. ...
Although the coalition government has pledged to protect funding for the NHS, the pressures to meet rising demand will put a strain on spending. Building on a previous analysis produced in association with the Institute for Fiscal Studies, this paper examines the gap between the likely available funding and the ...
The King’s Fund published its first Quarterly Monitoring Report in April 2011 as part of its work to track, analyse and comment on the changes and challenges the NHS is facing. This is the sixth report and aims to take stock of what is happening on the ground, 18 months ...
This collection of essays, published jointly by the All-Party Parliamentary Health Group (APHG) and The King’s Fund, maps out health priorities for the next parliament, as seen from the perspective of key stakeholders in the world of health.
This briefing provides a review of progress made since the BBC's 2002 'Your NHS' day on the five top priorities voted for by the public as the issues that mattered most in the NHS. These priorities were: free long-term care for older people; better pay for NHS staff; shorter waiting ...
Published in February 2007. and In order to help inform the debate about funding health over the next five to ten years, the King's Fund organised a meeting of senior managers, health economists and policy advisers at Leeds Castle. They discussed not only what level of public funding is feasible and desirable, but also the ...
This research summary outlines recent King's Fund work on waiting times, supported by the Department of Health. The research set out to learn from three groups of hospitals: those that have proved able to sustain reductions in waiting times; those with variable performance and those with a poor record on ...
This report looks back at past trends in NHS productivity to help us to understand how this has been done in the past and also identifies a number of opportunities for the future. The authors consider three areas - generic prescribing, length of stay and day case surgery – in ...
A range of factors contribute to whether patients feel they have good access to general practice care, including practice location, opening times, ease of arranging appointments, and speed of access. Performance by access criteria is now part of the quality-monitoring system for general practice. But patients still complain of trade-offs, ... and This paper was commissioned by The King's Fund to inform the Inquiry into the Quality of General Practice in England. The views expressed are those of the authors and not of the panel.
Given the wide and persistent variation in spending on cancer services, this project aimed to identify and quantify sources of variation in primary care trust (PCT) cancer spending and provide PCTs and cancer networks with a systematic way of framing decisions about the appropriate share of their total budgets to ...
Since 1983, NatCen Social Research’s British Social Attitudes survey has asked members of the public about their views on, and feelings towards, the NHS and health and care issues generally. The latest survey was carried out between July and October 2015 and asked a nationally representative sample of more than ...
This report shows that public satisfaction with the NHS overall continued to fall in 2018. The four main reasons people gave for being satisfied with the NHS overall were: the quality of care; the fact that the NHS is free at the point of use; the range of services and ...
Since 1983, NatCen Social Research’s British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey has asked members of the public about their views on, and feelings towards, the NHS and health and care issues generally. The latest survey was carried out between July and October 2017 and asked a nationally representative sample of 3,004 ...
Our Quarterly Monitoring Report (QMR) reveals the views of NHS trust finance directors and clinical commissioning group finance leads on the productivity challenges they face, and examines some key NHS performance data. and This is the first digital edition of the Quarterly Monitoring Report (QMR). The new QMR still includes a shorter PDF of the headline findings this quarter, but also features digital versions of the survey results, interactive performance data charts and an infographic with the key findings for this quarter.
This report brings together the findings and conclusions from three strands of research that addressed different aspects of the main research topic, which is the identification of successful strategies for sustaining reductions in waiting times. They are: identifying successful strategies for sustaining reductions in waiting times; the impact of waiting ...
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 ...
Primary care trusts (PCTs) spend around 75 per cent of the NHS budget in England. How do they decide on their spending priorities? This paper examines the data collected by the Department of Health on the amounts PCTs spend on the 23 programmes of care based on medical conditions such ... and An update to the briefing "Local variations in NHS spending priorities" published in 2006.
NHS spending in England may have more than doubled in real terms since 1999/2000, but the prospects for future funding now look bleak. Although there is consensus that the NHS faces a tough financial future, there is no agreement about just how cold the financial climate will be. Starting with ...
In 2008 the NHS celebrates its 60th birthday. This briefing looks at key health care issues over the last 60 years and forward to its 120th birthday. [Introduction]
This is the second digital edition of the Quarterly Monitoring Report (QMR). The new QMR still includes a shorter PDF of the headline findings this quarter, but also features digital versions of the survey results, interactive performance data charts and an infographic with the key findings for this quarter. and Our Quarterly Monitoring Report (QMR) reveals the views of NHS trust finance directors and clinical commissioning group finance leads on the productivity challenges they face, and examines some key NHS performance data.