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 ...
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 ...
This is a piece of independent research conducted by the authors at the King's Fund based on a Pfizer initiative. and Extending patient choice is central to the government's reform of the NHS. Patients will be offered a choice of hospitals for planned operations from December 2005 and will soon be offered choice in other areas of health care. This paper presents the key findings from ten focus groups held to ...
'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 book studies referral behaviour by relating medical referrals sent by doctors to a district hospital to findings from in-depth interviews with these doctors and to information about their use of the investigation services. The author goes on to study the outcome of the referrals by interviewing the consultants concerned ...