Throughout the world there is a recognition that the delivery of health care is ineffective and that these unpleasant outcomes are a product of the perverse incentives inherent in all health care systems. In New Zealand the Government documented the defects of the health care system and is now...

The Leeds Stroke Rehabilitation Placement Scheme (SRPS) provides short-term intensive support for vulnerable stroke patients on discharge from hospital. A previous study at one year post stroke established the benefits of this community support, demonstrating that patients involved in the scheme...

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that a social decision making approach to evaluation can be generalised to interventions such as public health and national policies which have multiple objectives and impact on multiple constraints within and beyond the health sector. We demonstrate...

The twelve years preceding the introduction of the community care reforms in 1993/4 saw an increased demand for health and social services generated by the increase in numbers of older people (particularly the over 85s) and reflected in the rapid growth of residential and nursing home places...

There is growing recognition within the National Health Service (NHS) of the value of providing patients with information about hospital and pre- and post-operative procedures, particularly in response to concerns about quality assurance and consumer satisfaction. Moreover, there is evidence...

Increased efficiency is one of the major objectives of the reforms of the NHS. However, this begs the question of how efficiency will be assessed, since one cannot necessarily assume that the adoption of market principles will automatically lead to efficiency. This paper discusses the methods...

Liberty of association is one of the building blocks of a democratic society, and presumes that community engagement in a democratic society is universally a good thing. This presumption is not subject to economic analysis, but the issue considered here is whether community engagement is a...

In both academic and government discussion of the performance of the internal market, lack of "good quality" information on prices is seen as a major impediment to the emergence of a competitive market. The National Steering Group on Costing was established to help NHS units improve the quality...

Four distributional principles for the allocation of health care resources are discussed: equal expenditures per capita, proportionality to need, proportionality to endowment health status, and proportionality to capacity to benefit. They are compared with another process, concept of equity,...

This paper examines the relationship between acute NHS Trust star ratings in England (generated by the Department of Health) in 2000/01 and 2001/02 with various other Trust characteristics and performance indicators from a Trust level database maintained by the Centre for Health Economics. The...