How is growth in diagnostic testing affecting the hospital system?
Diagnostic services, such as medical imaging, endoscopy, and pathology, have grown substantially in recent years and at a faster rate than most other healthcare services. Increased diagnostic testing brings benefits to patients, but rapid growth of this service area within a complex, adaptive system such as the NHS is likely to have had unintended consequences. Midlands ICBs wanted to understand the impact of diagnostic growth on hospital services.
Decision Making Blog #8: Infinity-shaped debate
I’m argumentative.
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
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
Decision Making Blog #5: Reaching disagreement
Two starting points:
Decision Making Blog #4: Embrace uncertainty - it's a badge of honour
Imagine this:
Decision Making Blog #3: The black hole of the status quo
Learning is one of the joys of teaching. And I’ve learnt a lot while helping people develop their decision making skills.
Decision Making Blog #2: Two under-appreciated sources of leadership power
Some forms of leaders’ power are obvious. Leaders hire and they fire.
Decision Making Blog #1: Better decision making: a neglected route to improvement?
There are two main routes for health and care services to improve the health of the populations they serve. The
Population health implications of the Covid-19 pandemic
Our new report for The Midlands Decision Support Network (MDSN) presents findings of the effects of the care disruption, from the Covid-19 pandemic, on population health. The in-depth analysis identifies which patients and health conditions should be the focus of future efforts in reducing inequalities caused by the pandemic.
Socio-economic inequalities in coronary heart disease
There are substantial differences in mortality rates from cardiovascular disease between socio-economic groups. Our new tool provides an overview, for ICBs, of the points on the care pathway where inequalities emerge and are amplified
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.
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.
Advancing the analytical capability of the NHS and its ICS partners
The Strategy Unit were asked by the Strategy and Development Team in the Directorate of the Chief Data and Analytics Officer, NHSE/I, to make recommendations for advancing analytical capability across the health and care workforce.
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.
Inequities in children and young people’s mental health services
Good mental health during early years and childhood has a great bearing on health throughout life.
Less noise and more light: using criteria-driven analysis to tackle inequalities
Reducing health inequality is a long-standing aim of health policy. Yet the gap between policy aim and population outcome has grown in recent years: on most measures health inequalities have got worse.
Strategy Unit analysis of air quality highlights inequalities
Poor air quality is the largest environmental risk to public health in the UK and central London has the highest levels of particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide. The Guy’s and St. Thomas’ charity, now operating its programmes under the Impact on Urban Health banner, have committed to 10 years of funding to improve air quality-related health in the residents of South London boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark. The charity commissioned the Strategy Unit to explore the health of several key groups and the factors that most influence health alongside air quality within the area.