When the National Health Service (NHS) was founded in 1948, the consultants–medical and surgical specialists–could only be persuaded to come on board by giving them contracts which allowed them to pursue private practice outside the time they devoted to their NHS work. Nye Bevan, the health minister at the time, was accused of " stuffing their mouths with gold, " and many felt the NHS practice ...

INTRODUCTION Timely access to the right kind of support for people experiencing a mental health crisis can be problematic. The voluntary sector (VS) plays a key role in providing support and enabling access, but there is a knowledge gap concerning its contribution and interface with public services in mental health crisis care. This study aims to address this. METHODS AND ANALYSIS The study h...

BACKGROUND Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME), in its most severe clinical presentation, can result in patients becoming housebound and bedbound so unable to access most available specialist services. This presents particular clinical risks and treatment needs for which the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) advises specialist medical care and moni...

While static microsimulation models of the tax-transfer system are now available throughout the developed world, health microsimulation models are much rarer. This is, at least in part, due to the difficulties in creating adequate base micro-datasets upon which the microsimulation models can be constructed. In sharp contrast to tax-transfer modelling, no readily available microdata set typicall...

BACKGROUND Providers of bariatric surgery within the National Health Service (NHS) are required to provide psychological assessment and intervention, yet operational definitions regarding the purpose and scope of this input are lacking. This has led to significant variation in the provision of psychology, with some providing an assessment-only service and others providing a more comprehensive p...

When the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), or the National Institute for Clinical Excellence as it was then known, was first established in 1999 its responsibilities were twofold. It was charged with providing guidance to the National Health Service (NHS) on the use of (mainly new) health technologies (so-called technology appraisals) on the basis of their clinical a...

This article considers how the 'accidental logics' of political settlements for the English National Health Service (NHS) and the Medicare and Medicaid programmes in the United States have resulted in different institutional arrangements and different implicit social contracts for rationing, which we define to be the denial of health care that is beneficial but is deemed to be too costly. This ...

Personal health budgets (PHBs) were piloted in the National Health Service (NHS) in England between 2009 and 2012 and were found to have greater positive effects on quality of life and psychological well-being for those with mental health problems than commissioned service, as well as reducing their use of unplanned care. The government intends to extend PHBs in England for long-term conditions...