The War on Waiting for Hospital Treatment (Harrison and Appleby 2005) examined the government's record on reducing the number of people on waiting lists for elective care in England, and the time they had to wait. This briefing provides an update on that analysis. The waiting times targets currently in ...
Practice-based commissioning is a policy that aims to give more influence and control to GP practices in England over how money is spent on health care services. At the moment, the bulk of NHS money is allocated to primary care trusts (PCTs) who then commission and reimburse hospitals (and other ...
While the 'postcode lottery' of accessing drugs such as Herceptin on the NHS attract media headlines, there has been growing awareness of more fundamental variations in spending by primary care trusts (PCTs), the organisations responsible for purchasing the bulk of NHS care for people living in their catchment areas. This ...
This guide sets out to show how teams of NHS staff can plan and deliver their own medium-sized design projects in hospitals by making better use of existing resources. It is aimed at a wide audience, including the frontline employees, such as nursing and estates or facilities staff, who may ...
Improving health and social care is a political priority in the United Kingdom. Boosting the number of health care workers and making better use of their skills are central objectives of the Government's plans for reform. However, recruitment and retention are major problems for the NHS, particularly in inner cities ...
Derek Wanless' 2002 report on the future course of NHS spending was immensely important. Not only did it directly inform the Chancellor's spending plans for the NHS for the next five years - which gave the NHS an unprecedented real increase of over 40 per cent by 2007/8 - but ...
Since its beginnings, the NHS has had a close relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. While not an official public-private partnership (PPP) there has been, in effect, an implicit PPP for pharmaceutical research and provision. This partnership has been an undoubted economic success. However, the interests of users of the health ...
This new policy paper, which follows up an interim report published in 2002, aims to take a fresh look at the issues facing planners, policy makers and managers responsible for maintaining and developing the health care workforces in London, and to tease out some of the opportunities, as well as ...
This research summary examines a key aspect of NHS staffing: that of the loss of experience from health services as older staff, who are valuable and much needed, leave early in ever-increasing numbers. With a workforce where about 150,000 of the one million employed are aged 50 or over, and ...
This book is based on a series of King's Fund seminars which looked at what values mean for a modern, publicly owned health organisation. It highlights specific value conflicts and argues that for values to 'live' as an organisational reality, trade-offs must be visible, managed and explicit. Topics include: the ...
The NHS is the largest single organisation in the UK. Its potential impact on the environment, the health of the public and the fabric of their lives is huge, whether as employer, purchaser of goods and services, cause of travel, producer of waste, consumer of energy or commissioner of building ...
This summary draws on 'Working for Health : the NHS as an employer and its role in regeneration' published in February 2001, and a public seminar, 'New routes to health through employment' held on 7 February 2001, organised by the King's Fund and the London Regeneration Network.
The Labour Government's commitment to making more use of the private sector in health care is proving controversial. Opponents are concerned that it signals the end of the NHS as we know it. Yet public-private relationships are as old as the NHS. This book analyses existing relationships and the regulatory ...
In recent years, new health care delivery initiatives have emerged that promise to overcome some of the long-standing difficulties that hinder the various parts of the NHS from working efficiently and effectively together. These include national service frameworks, care pathways and NHS Direct. However, their full implications have yet to ...
This book presents the reality of racism in today's NHS. It attempts to tackle the discrimination and injustice some people from minority ethnic groups working in the health service and particularly medicine currently endure. Using a range of anecdotal accounts, historical perspectives and research by contributors from culturally diverse backgrounds, ...
This publication is a comprehensive review of health care policy issues. It contains a calendar of events from August 2000 to January 2001 and articles on areas of health policy such as: setting targets for health spending; allocating resources to reduce health inequalities; health policy developments in Europe; the politics ...
This publication is a comprehensive review of health care policy issues. This edition takes London as its theme. It contains a calendar of events from February to May 2001 and articles on areas of health policy such as: public health; mental health services; refugees and asylum seekers' health experience; public ...
NHS Direct is a nurse-led telephone helpline which was launched in three pilot sites in 1998. An evaluation of the first three sites is still underway and, although preliminary results show high satisfaction among service users, it is too early to draw conclusions about the impact of NHS Direct on ...
Because the NHS was founded to provide equal access to all on the basis of need rather than the ability to pay, price was eliminated as a method of bringing demand for services into line with supply. This means that the Government has to make decisions about the amount of ...
This book is a sequel to 'Tragic Choices in Health Care: the case of Child B', and continues the examination of ethical questions and conflicts of interest arising from priority setting and treatment decisions. Discussing five cases where funding of a treatment was refused or questioned, it assesses whether lessons ...
A series of information handouts and leaflets given out to delegates attending the Conference on complementary medicine held at the Royal Society of Medicine, London on 26th September 2000.
Based on the deliberations of a Leeds Castle Foundation medical conference, this book looks in depth at five examples of how the NHS by choice or by accident has behaved with inhumanity, and seeks to draw lessons for the whole health system from these events. It reaches radical conclusions about ...
This publication is a comprehensive review of health care and policy issues. It contains a calendar of events for the months June to August 2000 as well as discussion of key policy issues. Specific areas dealt with in this issue include: the NHS Plan; public attitudes towards the NHS between ...
This publication is a comprehensive review of health care and policy issues. It contains a calendar of events for the months March to May 2000 as well as discussion of key policy issues. Specific areas dealt with in this issue include: the National Beds Inquiry; consultants' contracts; National Institute for ...
This publication is a comprehensive review of health care and policy issues. From 2000, there will be three issues per year. It contains a calendar of events for the months October 1999 to February 2000 as well as discussion of key policy issues. Specific areas dealt with in this issue ...
This report focusses on the fifth and final cohort of doctors who participated in the Clinical Leaders : Clinical Partners programme. It included experimental learning, reflection, relevant case material, bespoke and other simulations and shadowing
The stories in this publication were told as a part of a King's Fund project that aimed to uncover some of the values that shape day-to-day action and behaviour in the NHS. In one-day storytelling workshops, staff were asked to recount recent experiences that mattered to them, and service users ...
This publication is a comprehensive review of health care and policy issues. It includes a detailed description of health events in the last twelve months, as well as discussion of key policy issues. Specific areas dealt with in this issue include: influencing the diffusion of new medical technologies; the future ...
The 1997 white paper 'The New NHS: modern, dependable' promised to put quality at the heart of the health service, announcing the formation of a National Institute of Clinical Excellence, a Commission for Health Improvement, evidence based National Service Frameworks, a new system of clinical governance in NHS trusts and ...
This report describes the planning, implementation and outcomes of a process for involving local citizens and users and their organisations in informing the NHS Confederation's conference 'All Our Tomorrows' in July 1998, to celebrate 50 years of the NHS. The King's Fund was invited to contribute to the design and ...
This book is published to mark the 50th anniversary of the NHS. It traces chronologically the major achievements and events in medicine, nursing, hospital development, primary health care and health management. The introductory chapter describes the health services in 1948. The next five chapters each cover a decade, and begin ...
This paper explores the many meanings of democracy, seeks to define some criteria for assessing whether or not there is a 'democratic deficit' in the NHS, and examines the policy options that have been put forward for making the NHS more 'democratic'. The first section analyses the various ways in ...
This paper examines four major policy developments which are forcing changes in medical staffing arrangements and also in the reconfiguration of clinical services within and between hospitals. These developments are the primary care-led NHS, the New Deal on junior doctors' hours, the Calman report on specialist medical training and the ...
The Carers Compass has been launched by Carers Impact to help health authorities, NHS trusts and primary care groups to become responsive to their needs. The Compass reflects the work being done by the 19 Carers Impact sites across the country. The Compass points to eight key things carers need ...
This newsletter reports on a project undertaken by the King's Fund and commissioned by the NHS Executive in 1996. The project explored the multidisciplinary contribution to developing public health in the NHS, mainly in health authorities.
This report explores the multidisciplinary contribution to developing public health in the NHS. It reports on a research project commissioned by the NHS Executive and undertaken by the King's Fund in 1996. The project comprised a one-day workshop of 32 invited experts in the public health field to identify key ...
This report provides a comprehensive review of the health and health care of the population of London, based on a variety of published and unpublished data sources. The report considers London in three ways: first, by providing comparisons between different parts of the capital; second, by comparing areas of London ...
This is a pamphlet produced when the S.H.A.R.E. project closed. It is a brief update on remaining information providers and key organisations in the field of race and health.
This publication gives an account of a project co-funded by the NHS Executive and the King's Fund. It was devised as a response to the crisis in GP morale which began to be recognised in 1994. A participative workshop, 'A Day in the Life of a GP 2010' was designed, ...
How to ration health care is perhaps the most contentious issue currently facing the NHS. The debate is polarised between the view that decisions over rationing should be more explicit, systematic and democratic, and those who argue that such strategies are unrealistic and fail to understand both how the NHS ...
This paper presents the issues relating to rationing in the NHS. The group holds the view that rationing is unavoidable and feels that there should be a more explicit debate about the principles and issues involved. Questions are considered under four headings: preliminaries, ethics, democracy and empirical questions. The preliminaries ...
This book describes the trend towards more diverse and devolved forms of purchasing and combinations of purchaser organisations within health authorities in the NHS. It presents a multi-dimensional profile of each of the current models of purchaser organisation. Trends and policy developments are discussed in relation to the likelihood that ...
This protocol describes those components of the national evaluation of 53 'second wave' total purchasing pilot sites commissioned by the Department of Health from a Health Research Consortium headed by the King's Fund Policy Institute which form research contract 121/6090 dated 6 December 1995
This protocol describes those components of the national evaluation of 53 second wave total purchasing pilot sites commissioned by the Department of Health from a Health Research Consortium headed by the King's Fund Policy Institute which form research contract 121/6090 dated 6 December 1995