Patient choice has been central to the government's recent NHS reforms, along with a new payment system that rewards hospitals that are attractive to patients. But will these reforms make services more responsive? In the treatment of HIV and AIDS, patients have always had a choice of which hospital to ...
Working group included Keith Palmer and Rebecca Rosen of the King's Fund. and Recent changes in the NHS have triggered significant expansion in the involvement of independent and voluntary sectors in the delivery of services. How can this involvement be developed to ensure quality of care for patients and to enrich choice? This question was addressed by a small independent working group, commissioned ...
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 ...
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. ...
The government's reforms of contracts and pay for NHS staff are designed not just to pay staff more but also to secure changes in working patterns and productivity that translate into benefits for patients. This paper assesses the impact of the new consultant contract in England. Its findings are based ...
The reconfiguration of acute and community hospital services in England has recently come to dominate discussions about NHS reform - both locally and nationally - and is provoking a great deal of controversy. This briefing examines the background to the current debate, identifies the main factors driving the changes, explores ...