Chronic disease management

I was in Lisbon last week to speak at a chronic disease workshop run by the National School of Public Health.  Both the English and the Portuguese health services currently face a significant funding squeeze, and policymakers in the two countries see chronic diseases as an area ripe for potential cost savings.  However, in Portugal the focus is on different chronic diseases from those on which we concentrate in this country. Moreover, the emphasis in Portugal is on reducing the expected costs of these chronic diseases, whereas in the UK we tend to focus on preventing the...

The Nuffield Trust recently joined forces with Salzburg Global Seminar and the British Medical Journal to host a global meeting on health system reform. Housed in the magnificent surroundings of Schloss Leopoldskron, Salzburg Global Seminar has been a refuge for thinking and reflection since the Second World War. On this occasion, emerging leaders from 29 countries spanning every stage of economic development, met to discuss the challenges of achieving universal access to high quality health care that is both affordable...

On 22 July, The Nuffield Trust held the first in our series of seminars focussing on ‘High Value Health Care’, in partnership with the Royal College of Physicians and the Cambridge Health Network.

Before the seminar began I heard a few mutterings from audience members about how comparisons between Kaiser Permanente and the NHS are so well known that they’re becoming a bit trite. 
 
However, by the end of Bernard Tyson and Jed Weissberg’s presentations, nobody could be in doubt that the NHS still has...