If you look at how the NHS is represented in the media, healthcare dramas tend to equal hospital dramas: Casualty, Holby City, even the marvellous Getting on. Community services often feature as slightly misty eyed nostalgia of district nurses and midwives on bicycles—a bit of a blast from the past. Hospitals can sometimes be busy, […]
Category: The King’s fund
Chris Ham: The NHS Five Year Forward View—the man matters more than the plan
Something very important happened on 23 October and it wasn’t the publication of the NHS Five Year Forward View. Far more important was the passion and confidence with which Simon Stevens launched the plan and challenged politicians to provide the funding needed to deliver it. His performance stood in stark contrast to the bickering over the […]
Hugh Alderwick: The ups and downs on the road to health service improvement
Parallels between the successful transformation of the Veterans Health Administration (VA) in the United States and the changes needed in the NHS in England have been made for a number of years. But recent troubles at the VA offer some important lessons for the NHS in the future, as explored in a roundtable discussion held […]
Rachael Addicott and Kieran Walshe: How do CQC hospital inspections measure up?
Over the past few years, we have seen several high profile failures of care in NHS acute hospitals in England, leading many in the system to question the ability of performance management and regulatory mechanisms to identify and act on poor performance. Last year, in response to these events and concerns, the Care Quality Commission […]
Vijaya Nath: Medical engagement—change or die
More than a year since Robert Francis’s recommendations, and after reports by Don Berwick, Sir Bruce Keogh, and the new Care Quality Commission inspection regime, we are still being challenged to demonstrate that healthcare is first and foremost focused on the needs of the patient. At the same time, there has been a call for the […]
Hugh Alderwick: NHS performance—are we really getting it right?
According to the Commonwealth Fund, in the UK we’re getting it (mostly) right—or, at least, we’re getting it more right than our international counterparts. In their comparative study of health system performance in 11 countries, the UK ranks first across a range of measures covering quality, access, and efficiency of care, while the United States […]
Bev Fitzsimons: Practical tools to improve patients’ experience
At the King’s Fund, we have spoken a lot about the benefits of collective leadership lately. With the challenges currently facing the NHS, leaders at all levels across organisations need to learn to work together with a shared vision of providing care. Leadership needs to be distributed throughout organisations, working alongside patients, rather than concentrated […]
Michael West: Collective leadership—fundamental to creating the cultures we need in the NHS
Positivity, compassion, respect, dignity, engagement, and high quality care are key to creating the cultures we need in the NHS. And, just as importantly, we must deal decisively, consistently, and quickly with behaviours that are inconsistent with these values—regardless of the seniority of people exhibiting them. Yet in the King’s Fund’s most recent survey of NHS […]
Judith Hibbard: How do people become good managers of their own health?
Within the general population some people actively focus on reaching and maintaining good health, while others are more passive about the whole thing. So what makes the difference? Is learning to manage your health like learning a country’s geography—where all you probably need are a list of facts and a good reference guide? Or is […]
Chris Ham: Wanted—an even Better Care Fund
The King’s Fund’s new analysis of serious and growing financial pressures in the NHS should serve as a wake up call to politicians of all parties. As the analysis shows, with an increasing number of providers in deficit, and the prospect of a further seven years of no growth in funding, the NHS is rapidly approaching […]