Drawing substantially on original research, "Planning, Markets and Hospitals" represents a systematic attempt to access the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of planning and coordination of hospital development. Throughout, attention is given to key themes of regulation and governance, of the appropriate balance between planning and markets, and the question of the ways governments have sought to regulate and extend access to health care. It reinterprets previous histories of UK hospital policy and questions whether current policies will reconcile competing goals of equity and choice.

1. Planning Markets and Welfare: Debates about Hospital Policy and the Welfare State 2. Legacies, Donations and Municipal Priorities: The Evolution of the British Hospital Services Prior to 1948 3. Regionalism: A Positive or Negative Consensus? 4. Wartime Hospital Policy: Attractions and Limitations of Public-Private Partnerships 5. The Absence of a Capital Programme, 1948-59 6. Explaining and Reappraising the 1962 Hospital Plan 7. From 'Plan' to 'Programme', 1962-73 8. A Programme Without Policy? Hospital Developments 1973-91 9. Hospitals After the 1991 Reforms: Markets, Hierarchies or Networks? 10. Conclusions