Nuffield Trust Blog

Odd isn't it that after ten years of policies to encourage competition and choice and ten years of an increasing share of NHS cash spent on non-NHS providers, the evidence base supporting the benefits of competition in health care is too thin to make a sound judgement.

Odd, until you think of the evidence base to support integrated care, which is equally thin.

No wonder there is such room for howls of protest and undisciplined debate which doesn't get us much further forward. No wonder existing regulations and...

This is a critical time for the NHS, with many key themes to discuss. But my start to the year is dominated by emergency care – a very practical challenge but one that raises important questions about culture too.

Across the NHS we are really struggling with emergency activity. Even allowing for Norovirus and prolonged cold weather we are experiencing unusual pressure.

The...

Never in the field of NHS re-organisations can so many have left so few. Well, not literally. But April 1 sees some 160 NHS organisations, including all primary care trusts and strategic health authorities, abolished as hundreds more – 211 clinical commissioning groups plus a clutch of new national bodies and their regional arms – come formally into existence.

The result is what must be an unprecedented turnover of NHS chief executives. Some retiring, some moving on to other jobs, some taking redundancy, some leaving the direct employment of the service, some willingly, some not....

This was the question set by the Secretary of State.

We’ve been there before, and the added value of previous ratings relative to the costs is not clear either way. Nor indeed is the potential for ratings to have an impact in the future if there were improvements in its design and use.

So what might ratings add today? There are two obvious gaps.

First, there is currently no independent comprehensive assessment of quality across all providers and across the full spectrum of performance. Second, there is nothing...

In a speech to the Nuffield Trust a few years ago, the then-Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley, turned to the failings of care at Mid-Staffordshire to motivate his argument for reform.

In defending the cause of clinically-led commissioning, Lansley said: ‘where were the GPs? I’ll tell you: the GPs were there, they sent the patients to the hospital’ but too often they had a culture of ‘refer and forget’.

One of the questions asked by the Francis Inquiry has been: ‘where were the primary care...

For the third year running, we have carried out a small, snapshot survey of the NHS amongst the policy makers, senior managers, academics and clinicians who are attending our forthcoming Health Policy Summit, which takes place on 7 and 8 March.

This survey does not pretend to be representative in any way, but nevertheless provides a flavour of opinion amongst the 53 people who responded, in the wake of a year which has brought prolonged gloom about the prospects of improvement in the state of public finances and the passing and...

As clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) prepare for 1 April, one has to wonder how ready they really are to take full responsibility for local strategic planning and purchasing of health care.

The coming year will be one of immense challenge in terms of the quality and safety of health care, particularly in light of the Francis Inquiry’s call for a fundamental change in NHS culture.

And all of this at a time when NHS funding is flat and the NHS Commissioning...

Health care reformers tend to focus attention on hospitals and payment systems and yet primary care, where most patients are seen, receives comparatively little attention.

While it is acknowledged that hospitals are now poorly suited to the different types of patients they have to treat, the fact that primary care faces similar problems is rarely acknowledged. The recent Nuffield Trust European Health Summit, supported by KPMG sought to redress this balance.

Across Europe, primary care is often characterised by small and isolated practices, with few...

Amidst all the shocking evidence about failures of staff, regulators and managers, there's a subplot to the Mid Staffordshire Inquiry that's received less attention. This is the failure of the vehicles supposed to convey patients' voices beyond the hospital, to the local public, patient and representative bodies.

Evidence to the Inquiry exposed how the arrangements for responding to complaints within the hospitals failed to deliver: many patients complained to PALS (the Patient Advice and...