This paper reports findings from an ethnographic study that explored how market-based policies were implemented in one local health economy in England. We identified a number of coping strategies employed by local agents in response to multiple, rapidly changing and often contradictory central...

This paper reports from an ethnographic study of hospital planning in England undertaken between 2006 and 2009. We explored how a policy to centralise hospital services was espoused in national policy documents, how this shifted over time and how it was translated in practice. We found that...

Decentralisation has returned as a key theme in English health policy in recent years in policies such as Patient Choice and Foundation Trusts, among many others. The goal of these policies appears to be to stimulate self-sustaining incentives to continuous organisational reform and performance...

Objectives In many healthcare systems of affluent countries, general practitioners (GPs) are encouraged to work in collaborative arrangements to increase patients' accessibility and the quality of care. There are two lines of thought regarding the ways in which belonging to a network can affect...

Many public health systems in high- and middle-income countries are under increasing financial pressures as a result of ageing populations, a rise in chronic and non-communicable diseases and shrinking public resources. At the same time the rise in patient mobility and concomitant market in...

It has been argued that the British National Health Service (NHS) has moved from a hierarchical and bureaucratic organization to a market and, more recently, towards a network. The authors believe that this view is too simplistic: the three organizational forms have co-existed and continue to do...

New Labour argues that its ‘new NHS’ will achieve the traditional goal of fairness using the modern NHS means of partnership and co-operation. The authors examine the issue of reducing inequalities in health using the framework of policy, process and resource streams. While the policy stream...

This paper is motivated by sustained interest in the capabilities approach to welfare economics combined with the paucity of economic statistics that measure capabilities at the individual level. Specifically, it takes a much discussed account of the normatively desirable capabilities...

The paper contributes to the use of social choice and welfare theory in health economics by developing and applying the integration of claims framework to health-care rationing. Related to Sens critique of neo-classical welfare economics, the integration of claims framework recognises three...