ICS intelligence functions – a toolkit to support the implementation of NHSE guidance
In 2020, NHSE announced the expectation that ICSs should develop “shared cross-system intelligence and analytical functions that use information to improve decision-making at every level.” This expectation has been followed by more detailed
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.
Evaluation of Building the Right Support: Final Reports
Building the Right Support was a national plan to provide better support to people with a learning disability or autism.
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.
‘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. By predicting the risk of future adverse events, we should be able to target efforts to avoid/mitigate them. Doing so would save both money and misery. But, as Niels Bohr said wryly, “Prediction isn’…
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.
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.
A framework for understanding policy change
A new policy, strategic direction or major programme is announced. How do we begin to understand, interpret and explain it? And how can we start the task of analysing and critiquing it? I see three main approaches: 1: Personal views As an individual, we might ask whether we like or agree with the…
COVID-19: breaking the cycle of deprivation and ill health
Promoting whole-system action on the wider determinants of healthy life expectancy in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic
How can we learn from changes in practice under COVID-19
During the COVID-19 pandemic we have seen rapid changes in ways of working. We have seen an increase in collaboration, particularly through digital platforms, the sharing of data, and people describing ‘true system working’. So how do we capture innovations and changes in practice? How do we learn…
Modelling the impact of covid on waiting lists for planned care
Working with the national collaboration to coordinate covid-related analysis, and the NHSE/I Midlands region, the Strategy Unit has produced a ‘systems dynamics’ model of waiting lists for planned care. The model is freely available for non-commercial use across the NHS. Here, Steven Wyatt and Mike…
How can Integrated Care Systems collect and use more ‘person-centred intelligence’?
Working with our partners Ipsos MORI, we have produced detailed guidance and an offer of services to address this question. This webpage contains information about the work, and all the products from it. Please get in touch if you would like to improve your use of person-…
How will we know if Integrated Care Systems reduce demand for urgent care?
The implications of a blended payment system are far reaching: Decisions about planned activity levels will determine the total funding envelope for urgent care within a system and will influence the behaviour of healthcare providers and the services they deliver to patients.
Opening the ‘black box’ of scenario planning through realist synthesis
Scenario planning is recognised as an effective aid to strategic planning in complex, uncertain conditions. It is an approach that the Strategy Unit is increasingly building into its work with health and care systems and third sector organisations.
The Potential Economic Impact of Virtual Outpatient Appointments in the West Midlands: A scoping study
The Strategy Unit was recently approached to examine the case for a shift from traditional outpatient services to the use of virtual and remote access technologies for appropriate outpatient appointments. An essential part of this assessment was broadly scoping the potential socio-economic impacts…
Horizontal or Vertical: Which way to integrate?
In 2011, Primary Care Trusts faced a difficult choice. The Transforming Community Services policy required a complete break of commissioner and provider functions. But what should PCTs do with the community health services they delivered; vertically integrate with an acute trust, horizontally…
Scoping the Strategic Analytical Requirements for Clinical Neurosciences in England
Neurosciences encompasses a large number of services and interventions, delivered to individuals with a wide range of conditions by numerous providers in many settings. Describing the full range of patients, interventions and services will provide those who work in and support NHS commissioned…
Stage 2 Clinical Assurance Evidence Framework
Service change assurance exists to give confidence to the NHS and public that proposals are well thought through, have taken on board a wide range of views and will deliver real benefits. At the heart of the NHS England assurance process are the ‘five tests for service change’ that are in the…
Future Fit - acute hospitals options appraisal
The Strategy Unit worked as a strategic partner of the NHS Future Fit Programme in Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin from its initiation and until it was able to move to public consultation. A key output was the comprehensive appraisal of acute hospital options, the recommendations from…
Integrated Impact Assessment for Major Hospital Reconfiguration
The Strategy Unit worked as a strategic partner of the NHS Future Fit Programme in Shropshire and Telford and Wrekin from its initiation and until it was able to move to public consultation. A key output was a comprehensive Integrated Impact Assessment of acute hospital options that enabled…