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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.
News Evaluation and impact assessment | Policy
Menopause and the NHS workforce
Now with the World Menopause Day 2022 update. What is it like to experience menopause as an NHS employee? And what is its impact on both the individuals and the organisations they work for?
News Elective care | Inequalities | Policy | Strategy Development
Helping ICSs to reduce inequalities in access to planned care
Are there inequalities in access to planned care? If so, what are they? Which groups ‘gain’ and which groups suffer? And what could be done to address any inequalities? In pursuing their objective of reducing inequalities, what could Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) do? What strategies and approaches are likely to be successful?
News Futures thinking
‘Might’ is right
A good idea can be ruined by over-selling.
Blog post Emergency care
Urgent Community Response – What Works?
The Strategy Unit, with our partners Ipsos, has been commissioned by NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSEI) to provide a long-term national evaluation of the Urgent Community Response programme rolled-out across England. The programme aims to shift resources to home and community-based services as part of the NHS commitment to providing the right care, to the right people, at the right time. And there are a range of outputs from the early work that provide learning for local systems as they develop their 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.
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Appointing an ICS ‘Chief Analyst’
The Strategy Unit has, over the last ten years, developed a way of working that has allowed us to become recognised as a leading analytical organisation in the NHS.
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.
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Treating people on waiting lists: who decides what is fair?
Waiting lists for elective care are in the news. The national plan has been issued, with the expectation that lists will continue to rise for some years - and that long waiting will not disappear anytime soon. Addressing this ‘backlog’ will remain a fundamental challenge for some time to come.
News Better use of analysis | Futures thinking | Learning and development
Decision makers can make much better use of analysis
Part of the Strategy Unit mission is to improve the use of analysis in decision making. Current use is, to employ a euphemism, variable.
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.