Purpose – This paper aims to report on research into human resource management within an operations management environment; specifically, operational team-work amongst health care workers in a hospital. Design/methodology/approach – Eight operational teams within a UK National Health...

The aim of this paper is to report on the development of a Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) Model that was implemented to optimize the location selection for a new healthcare centre. The paper demonstrates how MCDA was used within healthcare to enhance the robustness and transparency...

April 2009 was an important period for all National Health Service (NHS) Community Health Services (CHS) organisations as they were formally separated from the commissioning service in the Primary Care Trust (PCT). This had many implications, including the need to establish individual board,...

This paper presents findings from an action research intervention in the outpatient department of a National Health Service (NHS) Hospital. It investigates the perceived and actual problems of performance measurement, specifically measuring capacity, at a United Kingdom (UK) hospital. An action...

The United Kingdom's publicly funded National Health Service (NHS) is entering a period of transition due to a growth in private healthcare providers. In response, the NHS must become more competitive; identifying competitive advantage, best practice and adopting formal management methods. The...

This paper explores the early implementation of an organizational innovation in the UK National Health Service (NHS) – Treatment Centres (TCs) – designed to dramatically reduce waiting lists for elective care. The paper draws on case studies of 8 TCs (each at varying stages of their...

This paper investigates the determinants of the prices of branded prescription medicines across different regulatory settings and health care systems, taking into account their launch date, patent status, market dynamics and the regulatory context in which they diffuse. By using volume-weighted...

The size of national health care expenditure is an important research and policy issue. This paper reviews theoretical and empirical analyses of an implied optimal size for a health sector. Various economic theories are explicitly or implicitly invoked, but none is fully satisfactory. Theory...

The objective of this study was to evaluate economically a screening programme within the Oxford Regional Health Authority for Down's syndrome, based on maternal serum {alpha} fetoprotein, unconjugated oestriol and human chorionic gonadotrophin as well as maternal age (the triple test) against...

To overcome the problem of insufficient research and development (R&D) on vaccines for diseases concentrated in low-income countries, sponsors could commit to purchase viable vaccines if and when they are developed. One or more sponsors would commit to a minimum price that would be paid per...