Blog

It's hard to disagree with the principle that both costs and effects of treatments need to be weighed in order to make decisions about improving value for money and productivity. For a majority of the public however, this is not a principle they hold.

Community services are a vital part of delivering co-ordinated care, and could be the answer to many of the health service’s woes in the future, says Bev Fitzsimons.

The case for change is clear; a system that listens to patients and enables them to achieve what they want to achieve in their health and wellbeing would improve outcomes and save money. But such systems still exist only in pockets around the country.

If we are seeking to truly understand health care, it is not numbers or stories, but numbers and stories that are needed, says Bev Fitzsimons.

I had watched One Born Every Minute and kept my eyes open; I’d attended NCT classes and yoga workshops; I’d done my reading. None of this really prepared me for the extreme pain and joy involved in giving birth to my first child, but it helped a bit. What I was absolutely unprepared for was the experience of being a hospital inpatient.

The government expects councils and NHS partners to achieve way too much, with too little, too soon, says Richard Humphries.

As a person and a patient, I care deeply about involvement. I know it helps me as a patient to live more sustainably with my health conditions and I know that, in turn, can help the NHS to exist more sustainably too.

With hospital workloads increasing on all fronts, John Appleby takes a look at the key trends and data to explain what's going on.

How long is it reasonable to wait for treatment of depression after being referred by a GP? The results from the 2013 British Social Attitudes Survey are revealing and suggest that public expectations exceed current policy ambitions.

As the instigator of the Barker Commission's experts by experience group, I want to share my experiences to help unlock similar groups on other commissions and in the NHS.

2014/15 looks like being a watershed year in which the NHS moves decisively into deficit, so where do the opportunities lie in delivering better value?

Grand promises have been made about the benefits of recording a deluge of personal data, but what needs to happen for these promises to be realised?

There is a growing disquiet around mental health. Across the board people are calling for change, but what exactly is it that needs to be done and how can we bring about the ‘parity of esteem’ that we all seek?

I agreed with much of what Simon Stevens said at the Age UK For Later Life conference until he stated that he would be ‘disappointed’ if care homes still existed within the next 50 years. I didn’t get the chance to challenge him but I want to do it now.

We need to be very careful in understanding the links between choice of metrics, impact of policies and population dynamics over time when coming to conclusions about the success or failure of ambitions to narrow inequalities in health, says David Buck.

Although earlier rumours of the demise of the Better Care Fund – the government’s £3.8 billion pooled fund to promote integrated care – have turned out to be greatly exaggerated, the significance of the government’s latest announcement about the fund should not be.

New organisational models for the NHS could bring benefits but it's the quality of leadership alongside a culture of excellence in performance and accountability for results that will be key, says Candace Imison.

We have ample evidence of what good care for older people looks like and numerous service models delivering it, yet we aren’t very good at disseminating good practice, and worse still at adopting and implementing improvements at scale and pace.

Patient and Family-Centred Care is a simple, low-technology approach to patient-centred service improvement – Bev Fitzsimons blogs about the benefits of using the approach, following the launch of our new toolkit with the Health Foundation.

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?