Most formal care services for older people are funded by the public sector, but they are largely supplied by independent providers. This paper looks at what factors influence the 'mixed economy' of the care market, including what funding is available and from where, and how commissioning works, and the role ...
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 ...
This study was commissioned to inform the King's Fund Care Services Inquiry, which was set up in response to concerns about the quality , appropriateness and adequacy of care services for older people in London. The King's Fund wanted to investigate how local authorities and their PCT partners were commissioning ...
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 King's Fund's response to the Department of Health's consultation on options for the future of Payment by Results (PbR), investigating whether ambitions for PbR might be mutually exclusive, and whether, as a single policy lever, PbR can be expected to help achieve any or all of these ambitions.
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 ...
Primary care trusts (PCTs) provide a broad and complex range of community-based services. However, the commissioning and management of these services have been a challenge for the NHS and in particular for PCTs. As PCTs provide community health services, there is a potential conflict of interest for their role as ...
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 ...
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 ...