Health Service Review

Northern Ireland’s health and social care system – integrated since 1973 – is set for major reform.  Simon Hamilton, the minister for health, social services and public safety, has announced a substantial overhaul of the organisational structures in Northern Ireland.   Reform is badly needed, with 373,000 patients on healthcare waiting lists for initial out-patient […]

Northern Ireland’s health and social care system – integrated since 1973 – is set for major reform. Simon Hamilton, the minister for health, social services and public safety, has announced a substantial overhaul of the organisational structures in Northern Ireland. Reform is badly needed, with 373,000 patients on healthcare waiting lists for initial out-patient appointments,

It was inevitable that the NHS would be a key ‘battle ground’ in the General Election – or “weaponised”, as Labour leader Ed Milliband put it. NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens put funding at centre stage when he warned last autumn of a £30bn a year potential funding gap for the service, of which

Handing over health commissioning to GPs in place of PCTs is a big step, which cannot be achieved in one ‘big bang’, the Department of Health has recognised. Rather, the transfer requires managed stages – which, ironically, initially involve greater centralization, before eventually becoming a more localized commissioning process. In December, DoH announced that PCTs

Attempts at reforming and improving the NHS became one of the defining and persistent challenges of the last Labour government – despite it doubling funding in real terms.  While major advances were made, it remained unfinished business for Labour.  The big question is whether the coalition can do better. Analysis by the King’s Fund concludes

The NHS Confederation – the membership body of NHS bodies – is having a busy year and the next few months are set to get even more hectic. It is not merely that the financial crisis could bear down on the NHS in ways that risk undermining the service: it is also that the looming

  Foundation trusts are now five years old. In their first year, just 10 of the best performing NHS trusts converted to foundation status. Now there are 117 foundation trusts: more than half the acute and mental health trusts eligible to convert have done so. But have the Government’s enormous expectations that greater independence would

  There were fears that the NHS could have been one of the main losers from the near collapse of the Private Finance Initiative. Over the last 12 years, some £12bn of new NHS capital projects have been commissioned through the PFI. But with the credit crunch and implosion of some of the banks most

  A principle of the NHS is that all patients are treated equally. But should that principle extend to effectively banning patients from buying treatments that may prolong their life, just because other patients cannot afford to purchase the same drugs?   The tragic death of Linda O’Boyle in June shone a light on an

From a distance by Paul Gosling   Private sector healthcare providers have responded with their feet to delays and confusion over phase two of the Independent Sector Treatment Centres programme. Many are no longer seeking large volumes of NHS patients and have walked away from dependence on NHS contracts.   Back in 2003, it looked

Three mental health trusts are at the forefront of a push to obtain foundation trust status. Paul Gosling discovers what others can learn from their experiences.