General practice has changed considerably over the past decade. Practice size has increased, the workforce has grown and become more diverse, the range of services offered has expanded, and the contracting and financing arrangements for GPs have changed. Current government policy aims to improve access and choice for patients, to ...
Government health policy has been encouraging a shift in the balance of care from hospital to community settings. The Department of Health commissioned The King's Fund, in partnership with Loop2, to undertake a simulation-based project entitled SeeSaw to understand how this shift in care could be achieved. This report outlines ...
As part of Lord Darzi's review of the NHS, each strategic health authority (SHA) outside London was commissioned to produce a report outlining their 'vision' for care in their region over the coming decade. This briefing provides a thematic summary of some of the key features of the nine SHA ...
This research summary presents the findings of a two year research and development project, supported by a King's Fund grant, examining how London's primary care professionals are working in the community to provide palliative care, and how general practitioners, district and community nurses , and PCT and specialist palliative care ...
The 2006/7 Operating Framework, published at the end of January 2006, sets out the Department of Health's priorities for the NHS in England over the next financial year, a year which the document expects to be 'challenging'. It is aimed primarily at NHS managers and their counterparts in local government. ...
In December 2006, the Department of Health issued its second 'operating framework', The NHS in England: The operating framework for 2007/08, which provides a set of rules and guidance for NHS organisations in England for the year ahead. Aimed primarily at managers and clinical staff, the operating framework for 2007/8 ...
In January 2006 the Department of Health published Our health, our care, our say: a new direction for community services. It is the government's seventh White Paper on health since coming to office in 1997 and, after several years of reform aimed at the acute hospital sector, it represents what ...
Practice-based commissioning (PBC) is a policy intended to give more decision-making power over NHS resources to general practitioners (GPs), and allow them to design and deliver completely new services or commission others to do so. It has a number of underlying policy objectives including delivering more cost effective and convenient ...
The reconfiguration of hospital services in England has been a contentious issue. There have been local public protests against hospital closures and more recently a concerted effort by the government to communicate the clinical case for change. The final report of the NHS Next Stage Review is due for publication ...
Primary care has been the subject of a quiet revolution in recent years, with the ending of the monopoly of provision by independently contracted GPs and the introduction of a range of new targets and new forms of first contact care. Now it is poised for further radical change with ...