The need to wait for health care has been a feature of the NHS since its inception. When Labour came to power in 1997, total numbers of patients waiting stood at 1.3 million: the highest since the NHS began in 1948. The government announced its 'war on waiting' and pledged ...
Local accountability has been a significant policy issue within the NHS generally. However, primary care trusts are in the main accountable to the centre and there have been calls to review this. This paper discusses a range of options for reforming the relationships between PCTs and their public. It explores ...
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 ...
This is the executive summary of a research summary which examines a key aspect of NHS staffing: that of the loss of experience from health services as older staff, who are valuable and much needed, leave early in ever-increasing numbers. With a workforce where about 150,000 of the one million ...
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 ...
This publication lays out the questions the government must answer if it wants to place patient choice at the heart of a taxpayer-funded health care system, including how extra costs will be met, whether patients are willing and able to exercise choice in their own best interests, and what kinds ...
The specific dynamics of the London health care labour market, and the challenges they create for recruitment and retention, were highlighted in the 2003 King's Fund report 'In Capital Health?'. In the 18 months since, a number of important and far reaching changes have been initiated across the NHS. This ...
NHS trusts spend about £500 million a year on food and catering. The government is committed to the economic, environmental, social and health benefits of sustainable food procurement, but this is difficult to translate into practice at a local level. In 2004 the Better Hospital Food Programme (BHFP) commissioned the ...
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 ...