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Patients or Customers
Are the NHS Reforms Working?

Edited By Sir Reginald Murley et al.
Aug. 1995
Institute of Economic Affairs
ISBN: 0-255-36360-5
87 p.
$16.95 Paper Original

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Mounting dissatisfaction with the National Health Service, under which all problems were blamed on "under funding" while levels of expenditure soared ever higher, led to major reforms at the end of the 1980s. These were described by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as the most far-reaching in the NHS's forty year history. Health care workers were divided into "purchasers" and "providers". General Practitioners were encouraged to become "fundholders", managing budgets to "purchase" services for their patients from "provider" hospitals and consultants. The issue of the cost of treatment began to figure more largely than had been the case under the old price-less system. In this book, a panel of medical professionals write of their experiences of the reforms.

Medical Sciences
Series: Choice in Welfare Series