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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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Need, demand, and supply of GP services: an old lens on an ever-present problem
About 20 years ago, I attended a lecture given by Andrew Stevens, a rather formidable and austere Professor of Public Health at the Un
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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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Part-time GPs and the decline in continuity of care: a cause or a symptom?
In our recent paper we explore why levels of care continuity have been declining and what might be done to turn things around.
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Two sides of the same coin
Hospital demand arising from GPs not seeing patients, is eating into the resources that they would use to manage down the elective backlog. In turn, this is creating more demand for GPs.
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Are GP consultation rates rising or falling? Who or what should we believe?
If the "data suggests" GP appointments are substantially higher than pre-pandemic, then what is behind patients reporting recieving fewer appointments?
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GP services: new analysis and fresh insights
In our latest analysis for the Midlands Decision Support Network (MDSN), we explore the long standing problem of access to GP practice consultations we consider the implications, and explore potential solutions.
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A collaborative partnership with the Health Foundation
The Strategy Unit is collaborating with the Health Foundation to help address key health and social care issues by combining our expertise in data analysis.
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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.
Blog post Evidence Reviews
No more suffering in silence, we want to talk about the menopause
To mark International Women’s Day on March 8, Karen Bradley, Principal Consultant at the Strategy Unit, and Susan Blakey, Senior People Consultant at MLCSU, two advisors involved in the recent project, ‘Menopause and the NHS Workforce’, discuss its significance and share what they want to see happen as a result of the published report.
News Better use of analysis
Analysts, we need to talk about…….
The future looks incredibly promising for ana
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?
Blog post Emergency care | Policy | Primary, community and social care services | Public health and prevention
Infant-feeding problems during the pandemic
Emergency department attendances fell dramatically and systematically during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. This effect was almost universal, affecting people from all parts of society and for all health conditions. But in our recent paper we highlight one notable exception to this rule -presentations at Emergency Departments for infant-feeding problems increased during the pandemic.