Yesterday we published a briefing on the digital agenda that has been pursued by the NHS since 2013 – the year Secretary of State for health Jeremy Hunt challenged the NHS to “go paperless.” We chart progress made to date and look at some of the barriers and opportunities presented. This comes two weeks after the Wachter […]
Category: The King’s fund
Richard Smith: What if everyone over 55 was offered a pill to prevent heart attacks and strokes?
The NHS, like other health systems, is facing huge financial pressure. Bold thinking is needed, and the King’s Fund, a British health think tank, has commissioned a series of articles asking authors to explore radical questions of “What if . . .” All of the articles can be accessed at The NHS if—essays on the future […]
Helen McKenna: The consequences of living within your means
The technicality (or “administrative error” as the National Audit Office described it) that enabled the Department of Health to avoid breaching expenditure controls set by parliament may have spared it from the full wrath of the National Audit Office, MPs, and the Public Accounts Committee; but it did little to hide the bottom line—a serious […]
Marcus Powell: A new and powerful relationship with patients
The NHS five year forward view talks about harnessing the “renewable energy represented by patients and communities” and the need to “engage with communities and citizens in new ways, involving them directly in decisions about the future of health and care services.” We know that one of the founding principles that underpins the NHS at […]
Chris Ham: What can the NHS in England learn from Scotland?
I was in Glasgow recently speaking at the annual NHS Scotland conference. I took the opportunity to meet national and local leaders to discuss areas of common concern. Three programmes of work in Scotland hold particular interest for the NHS in England. The first is work to improve patient safety and the quality of care. Leadership […]
Edward Wernick and Steve Manley: Meaningful patient collaboration—the end of the beginning . . .
The delay between this blog and the last one in November on the new King’s Fund Collaborative Pairs Programme reflects the level of work that we have been dealing with over the past few months. We write this after our final session on the Collaborative Pairs course at the King’s Fund headquarters in Cavendish Square. We have written before […]
John Appleby: New NHS inflation figures underline funding pressures facing the NHS
The latest Quarterly Monitoring Report from the King’s Fund surveying NHS trust finance directors reveals deepening pessimism about local finances and concern about the outturn for the current financial year. New NHS inflation figures from NHS Improvement reveal the true extent of the financial pressures facing the NHS this year and up to 2020/21. How much money […]
How do the healthcare systems in the UK compare with others internationally?
Two years ago I wrote about how health systems in other countries were grappling with the problems of how to support an ageing population with high rates of comorbidities. I was interested in the fact that the same policy problem can generate different solutions depending on the context in which it sits—so while it may […]
Chris Ham: Statesmanship among medical leaders could help resolve the junior doctors’ dispute
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the standoff between the government and junior doctors, failure to reach agreement on a new contract is bad for patients and for staff. The all out strike planned for the end of the month will cause disruption and delay for patients, and add to the pressures on staff who […]
What are the consequences of recent caps on NHS agency staff spending?
Four months since the first caps on agency spending were introduced by NHS Improvement—and after new framework agreements came into force last week—what do we know about the impact of these measures so far? Unfortunately, not a huge amount. Although NHS providers are submitting weekly data returns to NHS Improvement, no official figures have yet been published. Without […]