Publications

Our research with the HSJ Future of NHS Leadership inquiry highlights the difficulty NHS organisations face in recruiting and retaining people for executive positions.

From children's services to care for older people and end-of-life support, the community sector plays a key part in meeting the challenges facing our health and care system. This report presents findings from a small-scale study into how quality is managed in community services.

What are the key drivers of clinical service reconfiguration and what is the evidence to underpin it?

Specialists can provide support and training to help GPs and nurses diagnose and treat complex patients, write Ruth Robertson and Matthew Honeyman.

The CQC’s inspections focus on five key lines of enquiry as part of its ‘well-led’ domain. This paper sets out what boards can do in these five areas and draws on examples of good practice in leadership and culture in health care.

This report describes how CCGs in England are innovating with alternative approaches to commissioning and contracting as a way of driving integrated care.

We visited six services where consultants are delivering or facilitating care outside hospital. This report presents the findings from those visits as case studies and identifies some of the key characteristics and challenges to this way of working.

This paper seeks to identify the skills, knowledge and behaviours required of new system leaders and to learn from AQuA's Integrated Care Discovery Communities, which are attempting to combine strong organisational leadership with collaborative system-level leadership approaches.

The final report from the Commission on the Future of Health and Social Care in England.

This report, published in July, details the conclusions of the Review of Staff Engagement and Empowerment in the NHS, commissioned by the Minister for Care and Support, Norman Lamb MP, in November 2013. The review was chaired by Chris Ham, Chief Executive of The King's Fund, and supported by a panel of 17 experts.

The Health Service Journal (HSJ) has published its second celebration of health care's most inspirational female leaders with three of The King's Fund's staff being recognised for their work.

Our report is based on case studies of four NHS trusts with acknowledged high levels of medical engagement. It aims to help other organisations that are seeking to create cultures in which doctors want to engage more in the management, leadership and improvement of services.

Ahead of the Dalton review, which is examining ways to encourage the best providers to support those that are struggling, our paper with the Foundation Trust Network explores some of the organisational models that providers could use to meet their current strategic and financial challenges.

There are a range of models being explored by the Dalton review to improve NHS provider models in future. Health care management is complex and mulifaceted, so needs to successfully meet varying local health needs, argue Chris Ham and Chris Hopson.

Staff are beginning to question how much longer they can stave off the consequences of unprecedented financial pressure.

We speak to Michael West about how to nurture the sort of leadership that enables positive changes in culture.

Much less emphasis should be placed on the use of external pressures, such as targets and inspection, and much greater priority should be given to reforming the NHS from within.

Our paper argues for a fundamental shift in how the NHS is reformed, learning from what has worked (and what has not) in England and elsewhere.

The fact that people now live longer has been a source of concern for some years now. Many older people say they are happy and report high levels of well-being, while research is beginning to suggest that the proportion of old people with poor health may be reducing. So should this phenomenon be a cause for celebration rather than concern?

Chris Ham reviews this week's news and discusses why we must debate the future funding of NHS and strengthen leadership.