The urgent and emergency care services in England’s National Health Service (NHS) are currently the subject of a national review. The existing system, which is experiencing increases in demand, has been described as unaffordable, unsustainable and fragmented. In August 2013, the Prime Minister’s Office and Department of Health announced that an additional £500 million would be made available to...

Personal health budgets in England are National Health Service (NHS) funds that can be allocated to certain groups of patients to allow them, together with their NHS support staff, to purchase services or equipment that they believe will enhance their health and well-being. Some see this as a welcome personalization of health care that increases people's control over their health. However, pers...

OBJECTIVE To explore the use of external approaches to quality improvement in health care organizations, through a descriptive evaluation of the process and impact of external reviews of clinical governance arrangements at health care provider organizations in the National Health Service (NHS) in England. DESIGN A qualitative study, involving the use of face-to-face and telephone interviews w...

The Department of Health first outlined its plan for the implementation of activity-based funding in 2002 (Department of Health 2002). This was a radical move from previous ‘block contract’ arrangements where hospitals were given fixed amounts of money irrespective of their level of activity. Some of the advantages and disadvantages of the two systems are high lighted in Table 1. Payment by res...

BACKGROUND The National Health Service (NHS) has invested substantially in recent years to reduce variations in health care for chronic conditions such as diabetes. We examined trends in the management of diabetes in England between socio-economic and ethnic groups from 1998 to 2004. METHODS Secondary analyses of Health Survey for England data comparing achievement of national treatment targe...

The NHS in England has been urged to do more to support home care services for older people in guidance published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

OBJECTIVE To map out the current provision of interventional oncology (IO) services in the UK. DESIGN Cross-sectional multicentre study. SETTING All National Health Service (NHS) trusts in England and Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland health boards. PARTICIPANTS Interventional radiology (IR) departments in all NHS trusts/health boards in the UK. RESULTS A total of 179 NHS trusts/heal...

BACKGROUND The number of beds in care homes (with and without nurses) in the United Kingdom is three times greater than the number of beds in National Health Service (NHS) hospitals. Care homes are predominantly owned by a range of commercial, not-for-profit or charitable providers and their residents have high levels of disability, frailty and co-morbidity. NHS support for care home residents ...

AIMS To establish the nature, extent and organization of occupational health service provision for employees within the National Health Service (NHS) in London and to review the systems for monitoring performance. METHODS Human resources directors and occupational health managers were contacted from a random selection of NHS trusts in the London area and invited to complete an interviewer-led...

The UK Government’s centrepiece for reforming the National Health Service (NHS) is set out in The NHS Plan (Department of Health, 2000). The document provides an outline for a paradigm shift from a centralized, bureaucratically controlled NHS to a devolved patient-centred health care service, underpinned by an increase in spending over the next five years. The redesign of the NHS is reinforced ...