Evaluating the National Health Service - POWELL

"Like the NHS, this book offers excellent value-for-money. It is efficient in its use of resources, equitable in producing a lucid and informative outcome. It will be an indispensible reference work for both practising policy analysts and students," - Professor Julian Le Grand, London School of Economics

"This is a fresh and innovative study of the National Health Service. Drawing on his unusually wide research experience relating to British health care from the 1930s to the present, Martin Powell avoids the well-worn path by concentrating on the problematic area of evaluation. He demonstrates that balanced assessment of the NHS has been impeded by political correctness and rhetoric to such an extent that it is extremely difficult to arrive at objectively firm conclusions about the record of health service past or present.

In this ambitious, astute and indeed audacious study, Dr Powell penetrates the fog of obfuscation, and outlines a conceptual approach likely to yield more certain conclusions in the future." - Charles Webster, official historian of the NHS

* To what extent has the National Health Service achieved its objectives?

* How well does the performance of the National Health Service compare with health care before the NHS and with other countries?

* What impact have the recent reforms had on the National Health Service?

This book provides the first single, comprehensive evaluation of the National Health Service. It draws on original research to examine health care before the NHS, and health care in other countries in order to locate the service in its wider context. In eight, well-structured chapters it traces the changing policies of the NHS, analyses its successes and failures, examines the current situation in the service, and attempts to predict its future direction.

Evaluating the National Health Service is intended for textbook use by students of social policy, health policy and politics. It is also directly relevant to a wide variety of health care professionals both in training and in practice.