Tuberous sclerosis and polycystic kidney disease.

1992-3, without a parallel increase in activity. Last year, providers' deadlines for issuing prices slipped several times, causing chaos to purchasers. East Birmingham's last contract was signed in August instead of the preceding March. The new regional edict is: "There are deadlines; we do not accept changes thereafter." Howard Shaw was less enthusiastic than his director of corporate management about the workings of the intemal market. "We're two months ahead of last year, but I'm not sure we've leamt that much. I don't think we've understood how to play the market, or even if the market's to be played because of the whole complexity of the system. We've got 20 units providing 50 specialties-for inpatients, day cases, and outpatients. There's a price and a volume for each of these, and you can have price and volume variance on all these contracts. So you've got this mass of data, and we can't make head or tail of it." His opinion was echoed by Robert Marriott. He did not think that you could decide at this stage whether the outcome of the reforms was good or bad. "Mostly it seems confusion-because of the demands being made on both purchasers and providers." Perhaps in a year's time things will be clearer.