Research reports

Including reports from our QQUIP project, the results of our surveys and more

View cart

Search by:

  • Further evidence on the link between healthcare spending and health outcomes in England

    Stephen Martin, Nigel Rice, Peter C Smith, May 2008

    This report examines the link between healthcare spending and health outcomes across primary care trusts. It uses data prepared by the trusts to examine years of life lost across programmes of care. These include cancer, circulation problems, neurological, respiratory and gastro-intestinal.


  • Bridging the quality gap

    Sheila Leatherman, Kim Sutherland, Mara Airoldi, May 2008

    Stroke is the third biggest killer in the UK yet our stroke care lags behind other developed nations. The Health Foundation’s report Bridging the quality gap is a thorough exploration of the quality of our stroke care. Despite the national priority accorded to stroke, services in the UK are not as high quality as they should be.


  • Financial incentives, healthcare providers and quality improvements

    Jon Christianson, Sheila Leatherman, Kim Sutherland, March 2008

    Within healthcare there has been a longstanding interest in how the type and amount of payment to healthcare organisations and practitioners affects the type and amount of services received by consumers and, ultimately, the costs of healthcare to individuals, employers, insurers and governments. There has been an equally longstanding interest in how the cost of health services to consumers affects the services they seek out and use, along with the implications of this for overall costs at various levels of aggregation. But there has been much less attention devoted by researchers to the impact of financial incentives on the quality of care.


  • Organisational interventions for stroke

    Shulamit Bernard, Erica R Brody, Kathleen N Lohr, December 2007

    Stroke is a major cause of death and disability among older adults. It is one of the top three causes of death in England and Scotland and a leading cause of disability among older adults. Approximately 130,000 strokes and an additional 20,000 transient ischaemic attacks (TIAs) occur in England every year, and at least 300,000 people live with moderate or severe disability resulting from a stroke (National Audit Office, 2005). In addition to stroke’s impact on mortality and morbidity, it is also costly: stroke care costs the National Health Service (NHS) about £2.8 billion a year in direct costs, with an additional £1.8 billion in lost productivity and disability (National Audit Office, 2005).


  • Treatment of circulatory disease in the NHS

    Adriana Castelli and Peter C Smith, October 2007

    Macromeasures of productivity are important when deciding how much public money to devote to the NHS, and in holding the NHS to account. However, it is also important to gain an understanding of the productivity of individual programmes of care so as to ensure that resources are allocated efficiently within the NHS.


  • Patient and public experience in the NHS

    Sheila Leatherman, Kim Sutherland, September 2007

    This report brings together, for the first time, the scattered evidence on patient views of the NHS. The report uses over 40 different charts to give a comprehensive assessment of the Government’s efforts to create a patient-led NHS.


  • The link between healthcare spending and health outcomes

    Stephen Martin, Nigel Rice and Peter C Smith, June 2007

    The programme budgeting data offer immense opportunities for examining the link between healthcare expenditure and health outcomes across PCTs. There is extensive international literature on this topic, but very little solid empirical evidence on the magnitude of the link.


  • Healthcare delivery models for heart failure

    Shulamit Bernard, Erica Brody, Kathleen Lohr, June 2007

    The underlying causes of, and effective treatments for, heart failure are well understood. Nevertheless, heart failure continues to cause significant morbidity and mortality, quite apart from substantial direct healthcare spending.


  • Estimating health and productivity gains in England from selected interventions

    Bevan, Airoldi, Morton, Oliveira and Smith, April 2007

    Researchers from The Health Foundation’s Quest for Quality and Improved Performance (QQUIP) have developed an approach for analysing the relative scale of benefits of health policies to help assess where money might be spent to greatest effect.


  • The Commonwealth Fund 2006 IHP Survey: Analysis of the UK data

    Mark Hann, Diane Whalley and Bonnie Sibbald, April 2007

    The Commonwealth Fund 2006 International Health Policy Survey of Primary Care Physicians in Seven Countries was conducted between February and August 2006. The Health Foundation funded this expansion of the UK sample.