The government needs to put its house in order over how it approaches its much-publicised efficiency drive or it may find that the result is to make the public sector even less effective than it was...
The NHS Confederation has called for a renewed focus on the treatment of chronic diseases after research revealed that repeated emergency hospital admissions cost the health service £2.3bn a year.
& is a problem halved. But not when public bodies can't agree on the best ways to collaborate. Judy Hirst explains why sharing services is so hard to do
The Private Finance Initiative has never been a free lunch for the NHS. Now even the Treasury seems to be losing its appetite for large PFI hospital schemes. Noel Plumridge explains why
Almost half of nursing and care homes for older and disabled people fail to meet the national minimum standards on administering residents' prescription medicines, the Commission for Social Care...
Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton this week warned that a rise in the basic state pension age is 'inevitable' the first firm indication that his forthcoming retirement proposals could contain...
Paul Coen, the incoming chief executive of the Local Government Association, has vowed to forge closer links between local agencies as the spur to achieving improvements in public services.
Critics of local government's structure need look no further than Durham to support their case against two-tier councils. Would a unitary approach across England produce less confusion, while...
The government's white paper on health has outlined how it proposes to tackle inequalities of care, but fudges some crucial issues over funding and provision, which may undermine its effectiveness
The introduction of payment by results has put large capital building programmes under the spotlight, as it becomes clear that the new finance system will struggle to pay for long-term PFI...
As struggling NHS trusts face a year of even more cost pressures, targets, efficiency savings and payment by results, they will have to use every wile they can to attract patients. Seamus Ward...
Local authorities in England and Scotland have opened the annual trial of strength with the government over council tax with the traditional pleas for more funding and warnings of service cuts.
Health economists have called into doubt the government's presumption that its planned transfer of 5% of current hospital activity £2.4bn in budget terms to primary and social care will be cost-...
Voluntary organisations can reach parts that monolithic public services can't even get close to. And the government is waking up to their importance in areas such as employment services and welfare...
Local government minister and political wunderkind David Miliband has been tipped as a potential Labour prime minister. Vivienne Russell meets a minister who is very much on the move
This week's health and social care white paper promises joint working and preventive care in the community. But NHS deficits and social service cutbacks mean the trends are pointing the other way....
Tory leader David Cameron has hit the ground running, ditching old party certainties for the centre ground. But how much substance is there? Philip Johnston has his doubts
The Department of Heath must restructure the debts owed by the 169 NHS acute and primary care trusts or risk politically explosive ward closures and service cuts, the NHS Confederation has warned.
A High Court judge has ruled that the criteria used by many primary care trusts to assess whether someone should have to pay for their nursing care are 'fatally flawed' in law.
Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton could reinvest £4bn £7bn per year into the welfare system through savings and new tax income gleaned by reducing benefit claimants by 1 million - a target...
