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The risks of risk stratification
Medical history is full of bizarre and gruesome procedures.
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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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Strategy Unit Podcast
The SU Podcast is a monthly digest of our current work hearing from our multidisciplinary team.
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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 Evidence Reviews
What’s philosophy got to do with evidence reviews?
Ever wondered how to make better use of evidence in decision-making? Follow our latest blog series to find out more about how our Evidence and Knowledge Mobilisation team can help you to make sense of and use evidence from research and practice.
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.
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Decision Making Blog #8: Infinity-shaped debate
I’m argumentative.
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Decision Making Blog #7: Should we 'go with the gut'? Yes, but...
I’m not sure there’s a superlative strong enough to describe ‘T
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Decision Making Blog #6: The most powerful question in decision making?
I’m a fan of Shane Parrish and his organisation Farnam Street (strapline: ‘Helping you master the best of
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Decision Making Blog #5: Reaching disagreement
Two starting points: