OBJECTIVES To assess the variation in risk-adjusted 30-day postoperative mortality for patients with colorectal cancer between hospital trusts within the English NHS. DESIGN Retrospective cross-sectional population-based study of data extracted from the National Cancer Data Repository. SETTING All providers of major colorectal cancer surgery within the English NHS. PARTICIPANTS All 160,92...

OBJECTIVES To describe current use of electronic prescribing (EP) in English acute NHS hospital trusts, and the use of multiple EP systems within the same hospital. DESIGN Descriptive cross-sectional postal survey. SETTING Acute NHS hospital trusts in England. PARTICIPANTS The survey was sent to chief pharmacists in all acute English NHS hospital trusts in 2011. Where trusts comprised mul...

BACKGROUND Bevacizumab is used extensively in the treatment of cancer, including advanced ovarian cancer, for which results of the International Collaborative Ovarian Neoplasm (ICON) 7 trial have been recently reported. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence's (NICE's) recent decision not to recommend bevacizumab for advanced ovarian cancer was not based on evidence related to th...

1.1 Figure 1 of Annex A plots data for the 301 PCTs out of the 303 listed in the Department of Health’s document for which figures are available for both axes. The y-axis is the (presumably cumulative) surplus (negative if deficit) by the end of 2004-05, expressed as a percentage of the 2004-05 turnover. The x-axis is the PCT’s target index for the period 2003/6, defined as the (per capita) rat...

OBJECTIVES To assess the impact of provider diversity on quality and innovation in the English NHS by mapping the extent of diverse provider activity and identifying the differences in performance between Third Sector Organisations (TSOs), for-profit private enterprises, and incumbent organizations within the NHS, and the factors that affect the entry and growth of new providers. METHODS Case...

Performance targets are commonly used in the public sector, despite their well known problems when organisations have multiple objectives and performance is difficult to measure. It is possible that such targets may work where there is considerable consensus that performance needs to be improved. We investigate this possibility by examining the response of the English National Health Service (N...