Recognising the significance of mental health in terms of both expenditure and the overall health of the population, the King's Fund commissioned a review. This report presents current and projected needs for mental health services and their related costs. It gives details on a number of specific disorders, including depression, ...
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is acknowledged as a world leader in its field, yet the prevailing media image of NICE is as a controversial mechanism for denying patients expensive new drugs. Teresa Poole looks at how NICE appraises new and existing drugs through clinical and ...
Primary care trusts (PCTs) spend around 75 per cent of the NHS budget in England. How do they decide on their spending priorities? This paper examines the data collected by the Department of Health on the amounts PCTs spend on the 23 programmes of care based on medical conditions such ... and An update to the briefing "Local variations in NHS spending priorities" published in 2006.
The pace of change and reform in the NHS has been relentless as government and those who work in the NHS seek ways to improve the service. The King's Fund set up an expert working group to examine how effective the current incentives were in achieving this aim. The group ...
In 2006 a pilot programme was launched in partnership with six NHS trusts, supported by their charities, and two Marie Curie Cancer Care hospices to improve Environments for Care at End of Life. The objective was to see whether the King's Fund run Enhancing the Healing Environment (EHE) could be ...
If the health of the population is to improve significantly, patients need to be engaged in managing their own health. The increase in availability of information, developments in new technology, and changes in public attitudes mean that patients want to interact differently with health services. These developments present a challenge ...
Unhealthy behaviours - smoking, alcohol misuse, poor diet, lack of exercise - lead to ill health, with resulting costs to individuals, to the NHS and to society as a whole. PCTs are expected to commission support to help people change their behaviour to adopt healthier lifestyles - but what should ...
In 2008 the NHS celebrates its 60th birthday. This briefing looks at key health care issues over the last 60 years and forward to its 120th birthday. [Introduction]
Produced as part of the Point of Care: Seeing the Person in the Patient report. It contains interviews and focus groups, and the transcripts from the recordings which were analysed to produce this final document.
Healthcare-associated infections are a major concern to patients and the public as a result of both high rates of infection across the National Health Service (NHS), and media coverage of outbreaks at individual hospitals. The government has put in place a range of policies designed to reduce healthcare-associated infections in ...