The National Health Service (NHS) is the largest employer in the UK and since the late 1990s has gone through a period of unprecedented change in a wide range of areas from introduction of the NHS plan (Department of Health, 2000) designed to help the NHS meet the needs of patients and improve health outcomes; to the establishment of NHS Foundation Trusts in 2004 which have financial freedoms a...

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recently updated its guidance on managing depression, adding specific guidance for depression in people with physical illness. The guidance should help improve the targeting of treatments, although implementation of the guidance on depression in physical illness is challenging in the National Health Service (NHS) context of separa...

Starting in 1997, the United Kingdom has introduced a series of interdependent legislative and regulatory reforms to improve access, treatment, and administration in the National Health Service (NHS)--attracting worldwide attention in the process. The NHS quality agenda involves a centrally coordinated program, defined quality targets, public reporting, enhanced incentives for stakeholders, imp...

A B S T R AC T NHS Direct is a relatively new, nurse-based, 24-hour health advice line run as part of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). The service delivers health advice remotely via the telephone. A central aspect of the service is the attempt to provide a standard level of health advice regardless of time, space or the background of the nurse. At the heart of this attempt is an innovat...

The measurement and management of performance in the public services has become increasingly prominent in the past twenty years, and progressively more so under the New Labour Government. In July 2000, the government devised a ten-year plan for the National Health Service (NHS) to radically reform and improve the performance and cost efficiency of the service. Concerns about high levels of publ...

Argues in favour of utilizing qualitative methods to assess the effectiveness of internal communications in the National Health Service (NHS), as a supplement to the more standard quantitative measures normally employed. Presents a case study from an NHS Trust, demonstrating the type of data which is generated. Compares these data to findings derived by quantitative methods. Argues that the qua...

BACKGROUND To determine financial and quality of life impact of patients calling the '0845' NHS Direct (NHS Direct) telephone helpline from the perspective of NHS service providers. METHODS Cost-minimisation of repeated cohort measures from a National Survey of NHS Direct's telephone service using telephone survey results. 1,001 people contacting NHS Direct's 0845 telephone service in 2009 wh...

BACKGROUND Since the early 1990s, the National Health Service (NHS) has seen the encouragement and growth of research-based practice – described here on, as evidence-based practice (EBP). This policy has been promoted nationally by the UK Department of Health. As a consequence there has been a profusion of guidance, policy documents and service requirements disseminated to all levels of the NHS...

INTRODUCTION Manual therapy is the non-surgical conservative management of musculoskeletal disorders using the practitioner's hands on the patient's body for diagnosing and treating disease. The aim of this study is to systematically review trial-based economic evaluations of manual therapy relative to other interventions used for the management of musculoskeletal diseases. METHODS AND ANALYS...

OBJECTIVES The Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Outcomes (OHCAO) project aims to understand the epidemiology and outcomes of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) across the UK. This data linkage study is a subproject of OHCAO. The aim was to establish the feasibility of linking OHCAO data to National Health Service (NHS) patient demographic data and Office for National Statistics (ONS) date of d...