Health-service Evaluations: Should We Expect the Results to Change Practice?

Abstract

Evaluation is being given an ever-increasing emphasis within the health service, but there is a big question over what happens to the evidence from these evaluations. This research describes three different levels of implementation for three health-service evaluations. In broad terms, the results suggested that one had influenced practice, that parts of the second had been useful, but that the third appeared to have been largely ignored. In exploring the reasons for this, an attempt is made to extend the theoretical context of influences by identifying some moderators of health-service evaluation.