Campaigners have launched judicial reviews of a proposed contract designed to enable NHS commissioners to procure care from accountable care organisations. The contract would allow these organisations to take responsibility for budgets and services in their areas and there are worries that this will open the door to private companies to compete to deliver care […]
How reliable is the data collected about detentions under the Mental Health Act? Veena Raleigh looks at the data quality issues and their implications. […]
In 2005, I was a senior specialist registrar in surgery at the Royal London Hospital and managed casualties from the 7/7 London bombings. Twelve years later, now a consultant trauma surgeon at the Royal London Major Trauma Centre and director of the London Major Trauma System, I was surgical commander for the hospital’s response to […]
The King’s Fund’s June 2017 quarterly monitoring report (QMR) showed that NHS performance on key access targets over the financial year 2016/17 continued to deteriorate. For the ambulance response time, A&E four hour waiting time, and 62 day cancer treatment targets, 2016/17 was the third year in a row that performance was below the standard; […]
A trainee’s day falls into one of two categories: emergency or elective work. Both follow a similar pattern: arrive, handover, see patients (ward round and review new referrals), clinic/endoscopy/theatre, handover, go home. As a rule of thumb, elective work is more predictable and controlled. Despite this, the “nags” of the working day remain the same […]
Medical students rotate through clinical placements in their final three years of study. The timetables at medical schools are tailored to ensure that medical students experience different hospital environments, from large tertiary and regional referral centres to district general hospitals. In addition to different hospital environments, medical students rotate around different medical, surgical, and specialty […]
GPs have considerable insight into the care that their patients receive as we are commonly the ones to instigate the acute admission. We also take over the ongoing care of our patients following hospital discharge and are therefore privy to the stories that patients tell of their hospital admissions. Hospital care of patients As one […]
Recent figures revealed that NHS providers have a deficit of nearly £900 million for the first three quarters of 2016/17—a clear sign that NHS organisations are struggling in the face of constrained budgets and growing demand. At the same time, key performance data show that hospital performance, in some areas, is slipping. As NHS organisations seek […]
During the past year we have become increasingly aware of the pressures facing frontline clinicians working in acute hospitals. Each of us spent time in 2016 shadowing a general physician on their ward round to gain an understanding of work at the sharp end of acute medicine in an NHS trust rated as “outstanding” by […]
In the past few years, our focus at The King’s Fund—on integration, new models of care, and increasingly, place-based population health systems—has been concerned with the physical and mental health of adults, often older people. But we are increasingly aware of some of the trends, issues, and conundrums when it comes to the health of […]