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This paper describes major trends in the health care market. They include increased health care costs, the growth of managed care, emphasis on quality of care, consumer choice and the growth of the elderly and uninsured populations. The relationship between cost, quality, managed care and choice are explored in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. A clearer understanding of these trends enables managers in health care organizations to make strategic decisions resulting in organizations' survival and growth.

To develop a framework for evaluating the quality of Portuguese health care organisations based on the relationship between customers and providers, to define key variables related to the quality of health care services based on a review of the available literature, and to establish a conceptual framework in order to test the framework and variables empirically.

Systematic review of the literature.

Health care services quality should not be evaluated exclusively by customers. Given the complexity, ambiguity and heterogeneity of health care services, the authors develop a framework for health care evaluation based on the relationship between customers (patients, their relatives and citizens) and providers (managers, doctors, other technical staff and non‐technical staff), and considering four quality items (customer service orientation, financial performance, logistical functionality and level of staff competence).

This article identifies important changes in the Portuguese health care industry, such as the ownership of health care providers. At the same time, customers are changing their attitudes towards health care, becoming much more concerned and demanding of health services. These changes are forcing Portuguese private and public health care organisations to develop more marketing‐oriented services. This article recognises the importance of quality evaluation of health care services as a means of increasing customer satisfaction and organisational efficiency, and develops a framework for health care evaluation based on the relationship between customers and providers.

Neither private nor state run health care systems are perfect. Although there is increasing evidence that Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) provide comparable care at lower cost, HMOs tend to select healthy patients. The dual health care system in Hong Kong spends about 3.9 per cent of GDP, with health indices among the best in the world. Hong Kong still faces the problem of escalating health care expenditure. One should take advantage of the dual health care system to evolve a new paradigm for a primary‐led seamless health care service. The Diabetes Centre of a university teaching hospital together with the University of Community and Family Medicine has started a structured shared care programme in diabetes mellitus, involving general practitioners in both the private and public sectors integrating the primary and secondary care, and the private and public sectors. This programme starts to develop an infrastructure for providing quality care at an affordable cost for a large pool of patients with chronic disease. Unlike other “managed care schemes”, this one is not run by profit‐oriented companies, but by health professionals with an interest in providing best possible care at an affordable cost. The “disease management” approach needs a care delivery system without traditional boundaries; and a continuous improvement process which develops and refines the knowledge base, guidelines and delivery system.

THIS ARTICLE APPRAISES the Government's White Paper, The New NHS: Modern, Dependable, from the perspective of a health authority chief executive, outlining the context for developing health care, the joint challenges of the White Paper and the Green Paper, Our Healthier Nation, the role and potential of primary care groups (in detail), the developing role of the health authority, and the agenda for shaping and improving the delivery of health and health services. It ends with an appraisal of particular implications for community care.

In this paper, the Scottish Government's approach to improving outcomes for patients and service users by integrating health and social care planning and provision is described. The Scottish Parliament passed primary legislation in February 2014, which places requirements on Health Boards and Local Authorities to work together more closely than ever before. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper sets out the Scottish Government's legislative approach to integrating health and social care, based on previous experience of encouraging better partnership between health and social care working without legislative compulsion.

The Scottish Government has concluded that legislation is required to create the integrated environment necessary for health and social care provision to meet the changing needs of Scotland's ageing population.

The paper is confined to experience in Scotland.

Legislation is now complete, and implementation of the new arrangements is starting. Evaluation of their impact will be ongoing.

The new integrated arrangements in Scotland are intended to achieve a significant shift in the balance of care in favour of community-based support rather than institutional care in hospitals and care homes. Its social implications will be to support greater wellbeing, particularly for people with multimorbidities within communities.

Scotland is taking a unique approach to integrating health and social care, focusing on legislative duties on Health Boards and Local Authorities to work together, rather than focusing on structural change alone. The scale of planned integration is also significant, with planning for, at least, all of adult social care and primary health care, and a proportion of acute hospital care, included in the new integrated arrangements.

If public trust in health care is to be used as a performance indicator for health care systems, its measurement has to be sensitive to changes in the health care system. For this purpose, this study has monitored public trust in health care in The Netherlands over an eight‐year period, from 1997 to 2004. The study expected to find a decrease in public trust, with a low point in 2002.

Since 1997, public trust in health care was measured through postal questionnaires to the “health care consumer panel”. This panel consists of approximately 1,500 households and forms a representative sample of the Dutch population.

Trust in health care and trust in hospitals did not show any significant trend. Trust in medical specialists displayed an upward trend. Trust in future health care, trust in five out of six dimensions of health care and trust in general practitioners actually did show a decrease. However, only for trust in macro level policies and trust in professional expertise this trend continued. For the remaining trust objects, after 1999 or 2000, an upward trend set in.

No support was found for our overall assumption. Explanations for the fact that trust did increase after 1999 or 2000 are difficult to find. On the basis of these findings the study questions whether the measure of public trust is sensitive enough to provide information on the performance of the health care system.

The aim of this research is to study public trust in health care on its abilities to be used as a performance indicator for health care systems.

As the health‐care industry undergoes major change, a method of “accounting for quality” has become a key factor in health services delivery and fiscal accountability. This article examines several aspects of health care that inhibit the development of common methods of defining and accounting for quality. Key issues and characteristics of the health‐care market are addressed and the article provides a synthesis of these obstacles to the process of deriving common measures and standards of quality that may be utilized by the health‐care industry for financial decisions.

Successive policy documents concerning older people's health and well‐being have aimed to improve their care, by raising standards and promoting independence. These policies also emphasise the need for research to prevent disability, and reduce admission to hospitals and long‐term care settings. This paper reports an evaluation in progress of a health technology approach designed to achieve these objectives. An ‘expert system’ is described that is intended to improve older people's access to health and social care information, to enable service providers to review the health and social care needs of older people, and to allow planners to assess the needs of whole populations. The paper ends by inviting discussion and responses from readers of this journal.

Older people (particularly 75 years+) are the main users of health and social care services. They are also the age group most likely to occupy non‐decent homes. Government health and social care policy is increasingly focused on enabling more older people to remain living independently in their own homes and on delivery of care ‘at or closer to home’. This article considers how greater recognition of the negative impacts of poor‐quality and inappropriate housing on older people's health and well‐being, combined with targeted housing repair and adaptation assistance, could contribute to achieving a range of current health and social care objectives, including enabling older people to live independently in mainstream housing and better management of chronic health conditions.