The author states that the current development of a national carers' strategy is a significant milestone after two decades of campaigns and policy development to draw attention to the unpaid help that families and friends provide. Various questions are asked: how far have we travelled in meeting the needs of ...
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 ...
The White Paper "The new NHS" set out the Government's health policy for the next ten years. All general practices in England are to belong to a Primary Care Group (PCG), whose core functions will be to: improve the health of their community and reduce inequalities; commission a range of ...
This report focuses on NHS trust mergers and mergers of health authorities. It was commissioned by the HEA to summarise the available literature. It describes common causes of failure, and suggests ways in which NHS leaders involved in merger can enable the organisational aims of the merger to be achieved, ...
This paper describes how creative writing was used as a method of evaluation by the Newcastle Health Partnership. It was found that in most people's work there was a tendency to focus on products and outcomes, leaving little time and space to reflect on the processes which made these outcomes ...
This new edition of the Health Quality Service accreditation programme has been extensively revised and updated to reflect government health policy and guidance in the various parts of the United Kingdom as well as taking account of changes and developments in quality assurance and improvement programmes nationally and internationally. These ...
In this collection of stories, six managers and practitioners talk about their experiences of working with their counterparts in health and social services in development initiatives that were supported by the King's Fund in the period 1993-98. All of the accounts provide insights into the way people in primary health ...
While most GP practices participating in total purchasing have some experience of contracting with health care providers, the extension of their responsibilities has, in many cases, taken them into entirely new areas and posed a set of challenges for primary care-based purchasing. This paper concentrates on a central element of ...
This report is the fifth in a series of papers. It focuses on the inter- and intra-professional issues related to the development of intermediate care services. Previous work has dealt with a conceptual framework to clarify understanding of intermediate care, and issues of implementation, evaluation and funding. The aim of ...
This paper tells the story of the first two years (1994-96) of the London Health Partnership's primary care development programme. It describes the background to the project and its guiding principles, and then goes on to describe the diagnostic phase of its work and how systems theories influenced the ongoing ...
The King's Fund Primary Care Programme and the Health Quality Service have collaborated on a project to define standards of good practice for primary care groups in England. The purpose of the standards is to define good practice from inception and to guide primary care groups in developing as effective ...
This report aims to describe the ways in which the structure, role and impact of TPPs may be instructive to PCGs. Practical illustrations are used to demonstrate how particular changes in services were achieved in the context of local conditions, providing useful examples for PCGs. English PCGs are the main ...
The aim of this monograph is to promote urgent and informed debate on the measurement and implementation of quality in general practice. Its central theme is that the widely differing perspectives of those who plan, fund, deliver, receive, record and administer care may each be valid in particular contexts, and ...
This report has been prepared to inform the development of the Government's proposed 'Long Term Care Charter'. The findings are based on an analysis of focus group discussions held in three different parts of the country involving service users, carers and front-line staff with experiences of health, housing and social ...
This report is the fourth in a series of papers. It focuses on the costs and financing of intermediate care services. Previous work has dealt with a conceptual framework to clarify understanding of intermediate care, and with issues of implementation and evaluation. In the past few years, intermediate care has ...