While working as a volunteer at the Latin American Elderly Project, a day centre in Islington, Lucrecia Janowicz recognised that the older members of the project were unable to access the health information that they needed because they didn't speak English. She therefore decided to organise a series of talks ...
In recent years the NHS has made significant progress in increasing the number of non-executive directors (NEDs) from black and minority ethnic (BME) communities, as part of a wider move to reflect diversity at all levels of NHS organisations. Drawing on the findings of two surveys and interviews with individuals ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Social enterprises are businesses that deliver goods and services but in pursuit of primarily social objectives. The government is committed to supporting social enterprise in the economy at large and in its recent white paper has suggested that social enterprise models of service delivery can be part of the provider ...
Despite the rapid growth of funding, in 2005/6 NHS trusts in aggregate overspent by more than £1.2 billion, and the NHS as a whole overspent by more than £500 million. More than 60 trusts incurred significant deficits, and turnaround teams were sent in to find out why. Although until recently ...
The National Health Service (NHS) in England is in a state of transition as the government pushes forward a programme of significant reform. If the government achieves its stated objectives, the NHS will be transformed from a state-owned commissioning and provision system to one in which care is delivered by ...
The Cancer Plan has achieved impressive results since it was published in 2000. However, demographic trends, new treatments, increasing survival rates and reforms in the NHS have altered the context in which cancer services operate. Cancer Research UK commissioned this paper to explore how cancer policy should evolve in response ...
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 ...