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Problem Solving and Creativity
This one day training workshop is designed to broaden your creative and analytical thinking skills - crucial in the ever-evolving field of health a
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The risks of risk stratification
Medical history is full of bizarre and gruesome procedures.
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Ethical decision making workshop with Professor Angie Hobbs
A workshop with Prof Angie Hobbs exploring the ethics of decision making for clinical leaders.
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Want to ease pressure in urgent care? Simply cut community services!?!
What should decision makers do with analysis that challenges deeply held assumptions? In this blog, Fraser Battye reflects on a surprising recent finding about community services.
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Outcome-based commissioning: can we rescue promise from the rubble of hype?
The first effect of policy is on expectations. In every case I can think of, the effect is inflationary.
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Playing our part in conversations about death
“Dad, why are all your ‘peptalks’ about death?” Children can be a source of fundamental insight. They seem to specialise in feedback of the unvarnished, unmediated and fully caffeinated variety. The kind of feedback that cuts straight to it. My youngest daughter, mid-way through our sunny walk down the hill to school, pressed on: “And you wear black all the time. You look like a crow…” Fundamental insight, and now fashion advice. This was quite the school run.
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Ghosted by an old friend
“…personal contact was a vital element in general practice from the beginning. By 1959 50% of people in England regarded their GP as a personal friend.”
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How data makes things worse
All light brings shade. My list of ‘changes that have been all upside and no downside’ is short and debatable.
Blog post Better use of analysis | Learning and development
Diagnosing harms?
All medicines are poisons. Everything that cures could kill if administered in the wrong doses, to the wrong people, at the wrong times, in the wrong ways.
Blog post Learning and development | Public health and prevention
Could a peer review methodology help drive continual learning within and across local systems?
In this blog Karen describes how peer review methodologies are being used to support learning in Long COVID services.
News Elective care | Inequalities
Strategies to reduce inequalities in access to planned hospital procedures
UPDATE 10th August: Now including briefing note for Integrated Care Boards on legal duties in respect of reducing inequalities. This report guides ICBs through the process.
News Better use of analysis
We saw them before they were famous: reflections on AphA’s away day
In June 1976, the Sex Pistols played Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall.
Blog post Complex Modelling | Population Mapping
Bringing patient flow modelling into general practice
With general practice appointments hitting the highest numbers on record (34.8 million in England alone in November 2021), careful organisation and planning for patient appointments is increasingly important.
News Better use of analysis
‘Developing your ICS Intelligence Functions’: A Free Webinar Series
What is an ‘Intelligence Function’? What value can they add to decision making? How can they be configured and who needs to be involved? What lessons can be drawn from current practice?
Blog post Better use of analysis | Learning and development
The Intellectual Forum: a source of fresh perspectives on decision making
The literature on decision making is like a disaster movie highlights reel. Barely has one calamity registered before another serious misstep takes its place. Case study after case study flashes past, each with its own lessons and warnings.
Blog post Primary, community and social care services
Securing the future of domiciliary care
The Strategy Unit is embarking on an exciting project with WM ADASS, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Care Services in the West Midlands to explore the challenges facing domiciliary care and the opportunities that exist to transform and improve the service.
Blog post Comparative Analysis | Emergency care | Problem Structuring
Infant feeding problems, lockdown and attendance at Emergency Departments: what’s going on?
From our previous work, with Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation, we know that lockdown had a significant effect on attendance at Emergency Departments (ED). We also know that this effect was very unevenly distributed: some demographic groups stayed away far more than others.
Blog post Comparative Analysis | Elective care | Emergency care
Decisions to admit patients are not solely determined by clinical risk
Whether or not to admit a patient is one of the most routine yet important decisions a doctor in an Emergency Department
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Localism and the NHS: a case in four stories
In this blog, Fraser Battye makes the case for localism in the NHS. He tells four short stories. He suggests that these stories highlight an opportunity as the NHS enters a period of reform.
Blog post Better use of analysis | Complex Modelling | Primary, community and social care services | Public health and prevention
Strategy Unit releases opensource model for planning vaccine centre capacity
The UK is running its largest ever vaccination programme. The stakes are enormous.