Blog posts

Our new series of interactive charts: The NHS in numbers pulls together some key data on health care spending, activity, resources and performance. These charts broadly cover the boom years for health care in the UK, from the late 1990s to the early 2010s, reflecting the latest data publicly available from official sources.

During this period, when Government spending on the NHS rose at the fastest rate experienced throughout its history, both public and private spending on health care increased year-...

One of the most notable features about American health care is the use of fee-for-service as a payment model. In return for a consultation with a physician, outpatient procedure, or hospitalisation, the insurer (or the patient) pays for the individual services.

As fee-for-service operates on an individual service basis, the incentives for doctors to make more money are relatively straightforward – especially if a physician is the equivalent of a single-handed GP or private specialist – the more billable the activity, the higher the payment.

For example, given the choice between...

The Francis report has pushed money well down the pecking order as quality takes first, second and third place.

But as we come to the end of the financial year some eyes will again turn to how well the service is maintaining financial balance, meeting the Nicholson challenge of £20 billion savings and raising quality.

We know that the NHS needs to increase productivity to make savings, raise quality and balance the books. The consensus is that NHS productivity flat-lined over much of the last...

There is nothing like the New Year for compiling a 'to do' list, and nothing more satisfying than to start the list with some things you already have under way, so that you can tick a few off immediately. Last week the coalition Government gave us their version in the form of the Mid-Term Review.

The NHS chapter pulls together a series of previously announced service initiatives (e.g. rolling out telehealth and telecare, implementing a 'friends and family test'); details of their performance meeting targets and initiatives put...

It seems that as the focus of the health community moves away from the Health and Social Care Act the debate has begun in earnest about the funding challenge faced by the NHS.

No one working in the sector is under any illusions about the scale of the Nicholson challenge. The question is where are the public on this?

Communicating the concept of cuts to the NHS or thinking about how more money could be found is a task no politician would relish – and for good...

What role should social care play to support someone at the end of life to die in their own home? And how can health and social care services work together to make this choice a reality?

Macmillan Cancer Support’s own research shows that, with the right support, 73 per cent of people with cancer would prefer to die at home – but only 27 per cent actually do. If people’s end of life wishes are to be respected, it is vital that we answer these two questions.

Macmillan has been...

As a nation we probably have the best information on health care in the world.

Data on service use, cost, and increasingly quality, across the whole population and for some years, and large chunks of it available at person-level (suitably anonymised) and linkable wherever the patient receives care.

Useable to track costs, assess substitution of care, stratify the population by risk, track cohorts of patients through time, assess impact of interventions, spot good quality and efficient care, develop business cases for invest to save innovations, shape clinical behaviour, develop...

In the Whole System Demonstrator (WSD) trial, a team of researchers studied the impact of installing telehealth technologies in patients’ homes to monitor their vital signs such as blood sugar levels. 

Debate continues over whether the findings justify the Government’s policy of encouraging the NHS to invest more in telehealth. At the same time, the trial has raised a potentially even more significant discussion. 

How useful are randomised controlled trials...

As clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) head towards authorisation, the constitutional arrangements that link member practices to the governing bodies of their CCG are taking shape.

Advice from Local Medical Committees (LMC) and the British Medical Association (BMA) has cautioned against signing a constitution without explicit dispute procedures and which lack a clear commitment to engage with the LMC.

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