Pricing in the English NHS quasi market: a national study of the allocation of financial risk through contracts

The authors investigated how the formal national provisions for pricing in the National Health Service (which are a form of prospective payment, known as ‘Payment by Results’) are operationalized at local level. Transactions costs theory and existing evidence predict that actual practice often does not comply with contractual rules. A national study of pricing between 2011 and 2015 confirms this and indicates that such payment systems may not be appropriate to address the current financial and organizational challenges facing the NHS. As the NHS struggles radically to reconfigure services, it is necessary to reconsider the appropriateness of a wider range of pricing mechanisms to facilitate moving care out of hospitals.     

The price of fear: Estimating the financial cost of bullying and harassment to the NHS in England

Using a spectrum of measures, this paper estimates some of the financial costs of bullying and harassment to the NHS in England. By means of specific impacts resulting from bullying and harassment to staff health, sickness absence costs to the employer, employee turnover, diminished productivity, sickness presenteeism, compensation, litigation and industrial relations costs, we conservatively estimate bullying and harassment to cost the taxpayer £2.281 billion per annum.     

Planning and managing primary care services: lessons from the NHS in England

High-quality primary care services are an essential part of a successful health service. However, the planning and management of such services is complex. Using evidence from a study of recent extensive changes in the English NHS, the authors highlight the need for local service oversight by managers who understand local conditions and needs. The recent English experience supports an incremental policy adjustment approach, rather than wholesale organizational change.     

金融体系中的顺周期性：我们是否需要一个新的宏观金融稳定框架

近几十年,中央银行成功地不断追求低通货膨胀目标制,降低了通胀和产出的可变性。与此同时,出现了大量的金融失衡和其他方面的失衡(明显持续地偏离历史标准)。如果这些失衡能恢复到均衡水平,应该会对产出增长产生显著影响。尽管这样的不利结果还仅仅是一种可能,但本文提出的问题是,我们是否能从一个新的宏观金融稳定框架中受益,在这个框架中货币政策和监管政策更多地关注如何避免出现失衡现象。     

Public health care services in the advanced welfare state: Observations from the Swedish futures study care in society

In 1978 the Swedish Secretariat for Future Studies—a government advisory body for long-term issues of broad societal significance—began its project “Care in Society”. The final project report was published in May 1982. The original purpose of the project was to study how conditions in society affect needs for care in different forms and how these needs are met—informally or through formal institutions. More broadly, the study came to be a general assessment of the welfare state and its growing problems. This article examines findings and proposals from the Swedish report.     

Hospital accounts and accounting systems: a study in the French region of Toulouse from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century

Private charity was the origin of the foundation of hospitals in prerevolutionary France and at the same time their principal source of income; the church played an important role. The Revolution introduced many changes to hospitals. This article has two objectives: to describe hospital organization and accounting practices between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries as seen in three hospitals in the Toulouse region, and to show how the accounting model adopted was suited to their structure and aims.