Ed Christopher Riley, Morton Warner, Amanda Pullen, Carolyn Semple Piggot Radcliffe, £35, pp 254 ISBN 1 85775 018 7

Several assumptions underlie conventional wisdom on the need to do more with existing resources in the NHS. The first assumption is that fiscal retrenchment is here to stay and is a matter of neutral economics rather than of political choice. The second is that, paradoxically, although the NHS is a “good buy” by international standards, there is huge scope for making more savings. The third is that important budgetary savings can be made by transferring services from hospitals to what is loosely called primary care. A fourth assumption, sometimes accompanying this, is that prevention and promotion can reduce the need for acute medical care.

A book with the title Releasing Resources to Achieve Health Gain might be expected to justify its agenda empirically. That agenda is to improve …