'Free choice' - allowing patients being referred for non-urgent treatment to choose a hospital anywhere in England - begins in the NHS in England in April 2008. It is another milestone in a policy that aims, among other things, to use consumer pressure to improve the quality of hospital services ...
For the past three years patients referred by their GP for a specialist outpatient consultation have had a choice over where to be treated. As part of a larger research project, a survey was sent to patients in four case study areas of England to ask them about their experience ...
The six case studies in this book describe how purchasers, one of them a fundholding practice, bought interventions to improve the health of local populations in direct response to information which had revealed particular needs. The case studies have been published as examples of good practice because this effective and ...