The UK National Health Service (the 'NHS'), encouraged by the 2011 report Innovation Health and Wealth, Accelerating Adoption and Diffusion in the NHS, and empowered by the Health and Social Care Act 2012, is in the process of adopting a new agenda for stimulating innovation in healthcare. For this, the bodies, body materials, and confidential health information of NHS patients may be co-opted....

The National Health Service, yet again, is being cajoled and coerced into being more efficient. Many in the NHS resent this, perhaps understandably given the way in which the concept of efficiency has been devalued by this government. It is, however, an unfortunate reaction because efficiency is not something to be despised or feared. Despite the cajoling, little seems to change. The Royal Comm...

NICE: The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, and its Recent Guidance for Intrapartum Care The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is an independent organization with legal status as a Special Health Authority to the National Health Service (NHS) in England and Wales. Its purpose is to develop guidance regarding quality and cost-e¡ectiveness of clinic...

THE INTERPLAY AMONG QUALITY of care, technological innovation, and cost control creates a policy challenge for all health care systems. Improvements in the quality of care can reduce health care costs; for example, better management of chronic conditions may lessen the chance of hospitalization, and new drugs and medical devices might improve the quality and efficiency of care. Often, however, ...

I propose to discuss certain developments in health care arrangements which are planned in the United Kingdom. I will discuss these in terms of Scotland which has a separate health service and a separate health department for which the Secretary of State for Scotland with one of his junior Ministers is responsible to Parliament in Westminster. When the National Health Service was established, S...

1. UK National External Quality Assessment Service 2 Department of Haematology, University Hospitals of Leicester 3. NHS Blood and Transplant & University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust 4. Institute of Biomedical Scientists and NHS Blood and Transplant 5. University Hospitals of Leicester 6. International Blood Group Reference Laboratory, NHS Blood and Transplant. 7. Barts Health NHS Tr...

1King’s British Heart Foundation Centre, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom; 2Paris-Cardiovascular Research Center, Inserm U970, Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou, Université Paris-Descartes, Paris, France; 3King’s College Hospital, National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust, Blood Sciences Laboratory Services, London, United Kingdom; 4Department of Haematological Medicine, King’...

We model a system akin to the British National Health Service (NHS), in which general practictioners (GPs) are paid by capitation from general taxation. GPs are horizontally and vertically differentiated and compete for patients via their imperfect observed quality. We show that for any given capitation fee quality is lower and the incentive effects of the fee on quality are smaller when there ...

BACKGROUND This paper outlines the principal characteristics of a learning organisation and the organisational features that define it. It then compares these features with the organisational conditions that currently obtain, or are being created, within the British NHS. The contradictory development of recent British health policy, resulting in the NHS becoming both more marketised and more bu...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the implementation of the National Health Service (NHS) Health Check programme in one area of England from the perspective of general practitioners (GPs). DESIGN A qualitative exploratory study was conducted with GPs and other healthcare professionals involved in delivering the NHS Health Check and with patients. This paper reports the experience of GPs and focuses on t...