Publications

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.

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.

Rachael Addicott considers how forward thinking GPs can be more engaged in leading the radical service redesign that is required in primary care.

Our report argues for a new approach that brings together funding for general practice with funding for many other services. This would entail new forms of commissioning, with GPs innovating in how care is delivered.

The pressure of a growing and ageing population is made all the more pressing by the financial challenges that the entire health system faces and are keenly felt within general practice.

The King’s Fund proposes a radically new approach to commissioning and funding general practice to tackle the pressure of rising demands when resources are declining.

Over the past few months there has been considerable debate and argument about plans by the NHS to collect and centrally collate details of individual patient records from general practice for the first time. Such fears are perhaps not just hypothetical given past examples of lost patient notes and what appear to be the misuse of sensitive patient information (even for the best of intentions).

Our new paper looks at the changes needed to realise the full potential of community services for transforming care. How should services change in order to fundamentally transform care and move it closer to home?

This paper examines the transformation of mental health services in England and the relevance to current policy. Drawing on workshops with those involved in the changes and a review of published literature, the paper explores the context and factors that enabled change to happen in mental health.

This report synthesises evidence from seven integrated care case studies, and identifies lessons for policy-makers and service providers to help with the challenges ahead.

The challenges for commissioners and providers of telecare and telehealth have never been so great, but there are some exciting fresh opportunities to be considered.

Recently published trials on telehealth monitoring in heart failure

This paper offers a snapshot of health professionals' views and raises key issues for further debate, as part of our work on the quality of general practice in England.

We look at three types of technology: telephone, internet and videoconferencing, and consider how they could be used for or by children and adolescents across a variety of conditions.

Mike Clark describes the programme, set up by Kent County Council, to help 250 people with long-term conditions to live independently using telehealth.

This paper, the first in a series of WSDAN briefing papers, looks at how telehealth and telecare innovations are being used in health and social care.

This paper summarises presentations made at a seminar that brought together case studies from the NHS in England, Kaiser Permanente and the independent sector.

The King's Fund and Doctors.net.uk have commissioned a survey to find out how doctors feel about the plans set out in the coalition government's health White Paper.