Skip to main content
  • Textbook
  • © 1993

Rationing and Rationality in the National Health Service

The Persistence of Waiting Lists

Part of the book series: Economic Issues in Health Care (EIHC)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check for access.

Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-viii
  2. The Origins of Waiting Lists

    • Stephen Frankel
    Pages 1-14
  3. Waiting Lists and Health Policy

    • John Cullis
    Pages 15-41
  4. Opening the Gate: Referrals from Primary to Secondary Care

    • Stephen Farrow, David Jewell
    Pages 63-79
  5. Entering the Lobby: Access to Outpatient Assessment

    • Stephen Frankel, Margaret Robbins
    Pages 80-95
  6. What is to be Done?

    • Stephen Frankel, Robert West
    Pages 115-131
  7. Back Matter

    Pages 132-157

About this book

This book offers an analysis of the ways in which current means of rationing health care in Britain produce the least desirable outcome: The restriction of access to some of the most cost effective treatments. The problems of gaining access to non-urgent surgical treatments have beset the NHS from its beginning, and the existence of waiting lists is assumed to be the inevitable feature of the overwhelming demand for healthcare. Frankel and West's book examines the necessity of such waiting lists and considers the system which perpetuates them in its wider historical and political context.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Department of Epidemiology and Public Health Medicine Canynge Hall, Health Care Evaluation Unit, Bristol, UK

    Stephen Frankel

  • Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine, University of Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff, UK

    Robert West

Bibliographic Information