The role of charity in the provision public services is substantial academic and practitioner interest, charitable initiative within English Welsh National Health Service (NHS) has recently received considerable attention. This study provides rich insights into that NHS-linked charities present themselves as playing NHS. dataset analysed a novel construction 3,250 detailed expenditure lines fro...

OBJECTIVES To describe the plans of English NHS hospitals to implement ePrescribing systems. DESIGN AND SETTING Questionnaire-based survey of attendees of the National ePrescribing Forum. PARTICIPANTS A piloted questionnaire was distributed to all NHS and non-NHS hospital-based attendees. The questionnaire enquired about any completed or planned implementation of ePrescribing systems, the s...

BACKGROUND The study aimed to identify thresholds for hospital bed utilisation which are independently associated with significantly higher risks for Clostridium difficile infections (CDI) in acute hospitals in England. METHOD A retrospective analysis was carried out on reported data from the English National Health Service (NHS) for the financial year 2013/2014. Reported rates of CDI were us...

OBJECTIVES Ageing of the population brings the possibility of increased burdens for acute hospital services because of the marked increase in many common diseases with age. We aimed to examine the relation between age and use of acute services in hospitals in the period before death in a national sample of deaths in hospital. DESIGN Retrospective cohort analysis of English hospital episode st...

Major reforms were introduced into the English NHS in the early to mid 2000s, helping to reduce waiting times and length of stay for elective surgery. One concern, however, is that efficiency-oriented reforms may harm equity by giving hospitals an incentive to select against socio-economically disadvantaged patients who stay longer and cost more to treat. This paper aims to assess the likely ma...

BACKGROUND Organisations in England's National Health Service (NHS) are required to have 'did not attend' (DNA) guidelines to help deal with the 'unseen child'. AIMS To map DNA and associated guidelines in paediatric services, examine differences in safeguarding response and advice in the guidelines and explore the experience of guideline users. METHODS A mapping approach was used to locate...

The death of the English National Health Service (NHS) has been pronounced many times over the years, but the time and cause of death and the murder weapon remains to be fully established. This article reviews some of these claims, and asks for clearer criteria and evidence to be presented.

This is a commentary on Gilbert and colleagues’ (1) paper on morality and markets in the National Health Service (NHS). Morality and values are not ephemeral qualities and universal healthcare is not simply an aspiration; it has to be enshrined in law. The creation of the UK NHS in 1948 was underpinned by core legal duties which required a system of public funding and delivery to follow. The mo...