The English National Health Service (NHS) announced a new programme to incentivize use of the NHS Safety Thermometer (NHS ST) in the NHS Operating Framework for 2012/13. For the first time, the NHS is using the Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN) scheme, a contract lever, to incentivize ALL providers of NHS care to measure four common complications (harms) using the NHS ST in a pro...

OBJECTIVES In May 2008, the National Health Service (NHS) Lanarkshire (NHSL) implemented a unique telephone-based sickness absence management service entitled "EASY" (Early Access to Support for You). The EASY service supplements existing absence policies and enables telephone communication between the absentee, their line manager, and the EASY service from the first day of absence and referral...

Uniform health care delivered by a mainstream public insurer – such as the National Health Service (NHS), seldom satisfies heterogeneous demands for care, and some unsatisfied share of population either use private or purchase insurance (PHI). One potential mechanism to partially satisfy preferences discourage is regional decentralisation. We find robust estimates suggesting that development se...

BACKGROUND Recent British National Health Service (NHS) reforms, in response to austerity and alleged 'health tourism,' could impose additional barriers to healthcare access for non-European Economic Area (EEA) migrants. This study explores policy reform challenges and implications, using excerpts from the perspectives of non-EEA migrants and health advocates in London. METHODS A qualitative ...

OBJECTIVES To quantify service integration achieved in the national exemplar programme for single call access to out of hours care through NHS Direct, and its effect on the wider health system. DESIGN Observational before and after study of demand, activity, and trends in the use of other health services. PARTICIPANTS 34 general practice cooperatives with NHS Direct partners (exemplars): fo...

In the 1991 National Health Service reforms, health authorities became responsible for the health of their resident population, and they contract for health services from NHS providers - trusts and primary care services. A case study in Camden and Islington, an inner London health district, during 1996-1997 shows that contracting was directed more towards achieving financial balance than health...

Since 1974 the National Health Service (NHS) has been subject to successive reorganisations which have shaped and reshaped patterns of administration, clinical care and services. This paper uses two sources of oral evidence: a Witness Seminar with a group of administrators who attended the NHS National Administrators' Training Scheme in the late 1950s and a collection of interviews with doctors...

The National Health Service (NHS) market led to problems in funding research and development (R&D). The current policy is to resolve these by funding R&D through a national levy on purchasers. The policy does not, however, address the underlying problem that evidence produced by R&D is largely irrelevant to purchasers. The consequences of this policy are likely to be that purchasing will have l...

OBJECTIVES Service and stakeholder evaluation of an NHS-funded service providing out-ofhours (OOH) emergency repeat medications to patients self-presenting at community pharmacies. SETTING Community pharmacies across the North East of England accredited to provide this service. PARTICIPANTS Patients self-presenting to community pharmacies during OOH periods with emergency repeat medication ...

Recent changes in the English National Health Service (NHS) have introduced new complexities into the accountability arrangements for healthcare services. This commentary describes how the new organizational structures have challenged the traditional centralized accountability structures by creating a more dispersed system of governance for local health-care commissioners. It sets the context o...