Economic Behaviour and the Contracting Outcome under the NHS Reforms: Theory and the Example of Community Nursing
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
ISSN: 0951-3574
Article publication date: 1 September 1993
Abstract
Explores the problem of identifying efficient economic behaviour under the NHS reforms. It argues that “business‐like” behaviour by purchasers is unlikely to be economically efficient. However, discussion of more appropriate contracting behaviour tends to be blocked out by assumption because the roots of the reforms are in the economic theory of public choice and individual contracting. Drawing on a small scale research project on contracting for community nursing in one health authority, argues that the least economically damaging forms of contracting behaviour within the new NHS system may require producers to take a strong role in defining quality and responding to need, and that policy needs urgently to address the necessary organizational and cultural conditions for sustaining such behaviour.
Keywords
Citation
Mackintosh, M. (1993), "Economic Behaviour and the Contracting Outcome under the NHS Reforms: Theory and the Example of Community Nursing", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 6 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000001938
Publisher
:MCB UP Ltd
Copyright © 1993, MCB UP Limited