
A missing element in ‘shifting care’
Our Director, Peter Spilsbury, outlines the scale of the task when it comes to making ‘the shift from hospital to community’.

Are there any non-technical ‘rules of thumb’ for assessing the quality of analysis?
The report below is from a short project that explored a simple set of questions:

‘To risk stratify or not risk stratify, that is the question’ (At least, it should be)
Risk stratification tools are ubiquitous in healthcare. The concept is simple and seductive.

What are the downsides of digital?
What are the downsides of digital?

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

MDSN: GP practice productivity, efficiency, and continuity of care
GP Practice productivity, efficiency, and continuity of care

MDSN: The gap between need and supply of GP practice consultations
The gap between need and supply of GP practice consultations

MDSN: Long-term trends in GP practice Consultation Rates
GP practice consultations are, by some distance, the most common interaction between the NHS and the population it serves.

A Picture of End-of-Life Care in England
Working with Macmillan our analysis investigates who is more likely to experience poor outcomes associated with shortcomings in end-of-life care? Are there particular areas in England where those at end-of-life face significant challenges and how might the supply of services in an area be influencing these?

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.

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.

What are the ethical challenges in addressing inequities?
Produced by Angie Hobbs - the world’s first Professor in the Public Understanding of Philosophy – this paper examines the ethical questions raised by our report outlining strategies for reducing inequity.

Strategies to reduce inequalities in access to planned hospital procedures
In our 2021 report, we described how people living in more deprived areas have poorer access to planned hospital care than their more affluent counterparts.

Autism evidence scan identifies knowledge gaps
Diagnosing autism takes account of a person’s differences in social interaction and communication, sensory sensitivity, interests and behaviours. Yet autism varies hugely from person to person, both in how it looks and how it is experienced.

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.

Strategy Unit devises a new method for classifying outpatient appointments
The number of outpatient attendances in England is now approaching 100 million each year.

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.

Socio-economic inequalities in access to planned hospital care: causes and consequences
Tacking inequalities in health is a long-standing NHS policy objective. Variation in the experiences and outcomes of different communities during the COVID-19 pandemic served to bring this issue back into focus.

Equity and Cost Growth in Specialised Services
NHS specialised services provide care for people with complex or rare medical conditions.