£750m cottage hospital plan under way

The first of a new generation of NHS cottage hospitals will be announced by the Department of Health today, kickstarting a £750m programme to move minor operations away from the big general hospitals and closer to people's homes.

Blair and Cameron clash over NHS report

David Cameron seized on the findings of the health select committee and challenged the prime minister over accusations of 'poor central management' of the NHS.

Health minister steps down

The government denied that Lord Warner's departure was connected to the troubled NHS IT project he was overseeing.

It is broke, so fix it

Leader: Along with optimistic plans to move the NHS as a whole into surplus, comes the admission that the financial binds being imposed were "unsustainable" for many individual trusts.

How we got the figures

The Guardian applied under the Freedom of Information Act, asking the Department of Health to send the financial returns submitted by 507 NHS organisations across England at the end of the first half of the current financial year. The department sent a DVD packed with electronic files showing how the trusts performed between April and September - and what their forecasts were for the year as a whole.