Modernising the NHS: Patient care: access

Modernising health care: reinventing professions, the state and the public

Healthcare reform has been a constant phenomenon for the last two decades, regardless of being Bismarckian or Beveridgean. The launch of new reforms has increased in pace to a point that was defined, in a recent BMJ article on the UK National Health Service, as ‘constant redisorganisation’. Most of the policy analysis literature on healthcare reforms has been of Anglo-American origin. Consequen...

Customer care in the NHS.

Viewing individuals in need of NHS care as customers has the potential to refocus the way their care is delivered. This article highlights some of the benefits of reframing the nurse-patient relationship in terms of customer care, and draws parallels between good customer care and the provision of high quality patient care in the NHS. It explores lessons to be learned from those who have studie...

Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality: The Case for Language Access

This paper aims to provide a description of the need for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) for Limited English Proficient (LEP) patients, an identification of how the lack of CLAS for LEP patients can compromise patient safety and healthcare quality, and discuss barriers to the provision of CLAS.

Cancer care in the NHS

Modernising epidemic science: enabling patient-centred research during epidemics

BACKGROUND Emerging and epidemic infectious disease outbreaks are a significant public health problem and global health security threat. As an outbreak begins, epidemiological investigations and traditional public health responses are generally mounted very quickly. However, patient-centred research is usually not prioritised when planning and enacting the response. Instead, the clinical resear...