John Appleby, Chief Economist at The King's Fund, looks at the good, the bad and the inexplicable of NHS health care variations alongside our new report.

1. Variations in health care: The good, the bad and the inexplicable Maximising the good and minimising the bad in health care John Appleby Chief Economist, The King’s Fund April 2011

2. Figure 1: Mapping the causes of variation

3. Figure 3: Distribution of crude rates and age–gender standardised rates for primary hip replacement (English PCTs, 2009/10)

4. Figure 6: Age–gender standardised ratios for selected elective procedures (2009/10), England=100

5. Figure 9: Variation over time: SCVs for hip replacement, cataract removal and tonsillectomy 2005/06, 2009/10

7. Figure 12: Measures of variation: selected low effectiveness procedures, 2009/10