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Evidence suggests that healthcare system performance may be improved with policy emphasis on primary care, quality improvement, and information technology. The authors therefore sought to investigate the extent to which policy makers in seven countries are emphasizing these areas.

Policies in these three areas in seven high-income countries were compared. A comparative descriptive approach was taken in which each of the country-specialist authors supplied information on key policies and developments pertaining to primary care, quality improvement and information technology, supplemented with routine data.

Each of the seven countries faces similar challenges with healthcare system performance, yet differs in emphasis on the three key policy areas; efforts in each are, at best, patchy. The authors conclude that there is substantial scope for policy makers to further emphasize primary care, quality improvement and information technology if aiming for high-performing healthcare systems.

This is the first study to investigate policy-makers' commitment to key areas known to improve health system performance. The comparative method illustrates the different emphases that countries have placed on primary care, quality improvement and information technology development.

Two years ago, we published within this journal a scoping article (Turpin et al, 2006) concerning the urgent need to review and enhance the workforce responsible for delivering psychological therapies to people seeking help for common mental health problems in primary care (London School of Economics, 2006). We estimated that the demand for such interventions, the service models that might deliver increased capacity for psychological treatments, the implications for workforce numbers and the impact that this would have on education and training. Much of the thinking that was adopted within the review was based on current development work around the mental health workforce led by the National Workforce Programme sponsored by the National Institute for Mental Health England (NIMHE) on New Ways of Working (NWW).The current paper reflects on the process and the added value that NWW has contributed to what is a radical new venture, which has been described by the lead evaluator of the pilot Improving Access for Psychological Therapies (IAPT) phase, Professor Glenys Parry, as 'the industrialisation of psychological therapies'. More specifically, it reviews the implementation of a national programme designated as IAPT, which was commissioned on the basis of the NWW work, and the evidence accrued from the IAPT national demonstration sites at Doncaster and Newham, together with the efforts of Lord Layard and the New Savoy Partnership.The first year implementation of IAPT is described, together with the lessons learned from the roll out. As the programme has developed, it has become important to ensure that clients also have a choice of evidence‐based interventions. NWW has provided a means to help practitioners come together from a range of therapeutic orientations and professions to contribute to this more diverse workforce. Finally, it is argued that NWW has been instrumental in helping managers and professions alike think more flexibly about service models and provision, and how to develop a new workforce competent to deliver such an innovative service.

In most businesses effective leadership is still considered to be tough, competitive, rational, impersonal, strategic, etc.— in short, the traditional male model. Recently, however, sociologists and business writers have begun to challenge this model. Recognition increases that we need leaders who are participatory and supportive. Furthermore, increased world competition, new technologies, shifting markets, and other economic pressures are forcing corporations to change the way they do business. Even the old rules of management and leadership do not always hold true anymore. Fortunately, this period of change happens to coincide with the entry of more and more women into managerial positions, which works to their advantage. And it does because it puts them on the same footing as their male peers, who must learn the new rules, too.