What are the downsides of digital?

Making a list of ‘pros and cons’ is the first analytical technique most of us encounter.

Ara Darzi, Wes Streeting and English health policy. Part 2: cutting the knot

Following on from part one, Fraser continues exploring the Gordian Knot of English health policy.

Ara Darzi, Wes Streeting and English health policy. Part 1: the Gordian Knot

Health policy is not at a crossroads, it is in a bind. Strands so entangled, so complex they resemble a Gordian knot. Can this knot be untied?

The risks of risk stratification

Medical history is full of bizarre and gruesome procedures.

Midlands Analyst Network and Huddles

The Midlands Analyst Network was created to provide a space for analysts to share information, ideas and resources, as well as seek advice and guidance from one another.

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.

How Does Access to Community Health Services for Older People Vary Across the Midlands?

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.

Contracting for health outcomes: from concept through theory to implementation

In this new report, jointly authored with colleagues from the University of York and The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, we set out in detail how an outcomes-based contract for elective knee replacements might be constructed, and the potential implications for commissioners, providers, and policy-makers.

MDSN: Community Healthcare Services

How Does Access to Community Health Services Vary Across the Midlands?

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.

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

Insight to action blog #3: It's a community effort

There are many challenges in translating the findings from insights into action.

Insight to action blog #2: Conversations between decision makers and analysts

The quality of the analyst-decision maker relationship really matters when it comes to the translation of insights to action.

Insight to action blog #1: From translation to application

“Solving complex problems requires new approaches to problem solving…To do this, organisations and communities need to become skilled in mobilising

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.”

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.

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.

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?