In a health care system where resources are scarce and the principle of equity is of central concern, mechanisms for the appropriate allocation of resources based on the notion of relating resource use to some concept of need are essential. Two key issues raised in the UK government’s White...

The objective of the study was to examine the links between inputs into the process of nursing, in particular, the skill mix of nursing staff and the outputs of nursing in terms of the quality and outcome of care. The review of literature revealed several ambiguities and conceptual problems at...

This document describes the findings of a statistical analysis of the determinants of utilisation of National Health Service inpatient facilities by small areas in England. It forms part of a study by the University of York commissioned by the NHS Executive. The primary purpose of the study was...

This report describes the construction of a database of examples of consumer involvement in research. It summarises the material on the accompanying database and discusses some of the problems of finding and classifying suitable examples. The database was commissioned to: map the field of...

The Medical Manpower Standing Advisory Committee made its first report, “Planning the Medical Workforce”, to the Secretary of State in December 1992; recommending that research should be undertaken to quantify the manpower effects of skill mix initiatives. These issues are being raised against a...

General Medical Services (GMS) are provided mainly through Family Practices, on a demand led basis: that is, there is no cash limit expect for certain specified selected services such as Practice Nurses etc. Nevertheless, since 1948, the Medical Practices Committee (MPC) have influenced the...

The general aim of this one-year project, funded by the Department of Health and in collaboration with CASPE, has been to investigate the relationship between case-mix and nursing workload measures. Specifically, this report focuses on the underlying issue of examining methodologies and...

The objective of this paper is to set out the key findings and implications from an analysis of the activity and workload of nurses of different grades. This is with a view to identifying nursing skill mixes and working practices that may reduce workforce demand for more highly skilled nursing...

This paper illustrates some of the ways in which the Family Practitioner Committee will have to change in order to being about their transformation from the ‘passive paying agency’ into the ‘active manager of customer interests’ when the proposals from the recent White Paper, ‘Working...

Every year the United Kingdom central government assesses the relative spending needs of English local authorities in respect of the services for which is it responsible. This is done by estimating a Standard Spending Assessment (SSA) for each service, which is intended to indicate the spending...