Menopause and the NHS workforce
The impact of the menopause on the NHS workforce. The Strategy Unit and Health Economics Unit report on their mixed methods findings.
Learning about what works in urgent community response
The initial report from the national urgent community response (UCR) evaluation, along with an economic modelling tool to help service providers and systems understand the impact of UCR, is now available.
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.
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. By contrast, poor mental health can cast a long shadow. Consequences may include depression, self-harm, and poor physical health. Services recognise this. They aim to provide access to support in a…
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.
Increasing vaccine uptake
The purpose of this work was to identify the key features of local initiatives which encourage vaccine uptake in different population groups, and share these for others to learn from.
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.
Learning from lockdown: support for people experiencing homelessness
There are few clearer measures of societal health than homelessness. On this count, and despite its enormous material wealth, England is in poor shape. Relative to the recent past, and any country we might want to compare ourselves to, we have a problem with homelessness. The causes of homelessness…
Health service use in the last two years of life
Health and care services get just one opportunity to support people at the end of their life. When this support is compassionate and appropriate, unnecessary suffering can be avoided and grieving can be eased. When this is not the case, harm and distress can result. The difference in these…
Primary and Community Qualitative Insights
The COVID-19 response required rapid change and innovation across health and care. As part of a wider package of evaluation support, from April to June, the Strategy Unit led some qualitative work (training and supporting CCG staff to conduct interviews) across an STP to capture learning from…
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.
Waiting Times and Attendance Durations at English A&E Departments
In March 2019, NHS England is expected to report the outcome of its review of constitutional waiting times targets. This report reviews the factors that have led to the decline in performance against one of these targets - the 4-hour target for Accident and Emergency Departments. The analysis…
The Status of Electronic Palliative Care Coordination Systems in the West Midlands
Commissioned by NHS England, this report describes the state of electronic palliative care coordination systems in the West Midlands. It draws on a review of the literature, interviews with local NHS staff and responses to information requests. As people approach the end of their lives…
Lessons from the Vanguard: Innovation and Evaluation
The problems facing health and care services are so well known as to be documented in the media most days. These problems arise from a mismatch between need and provision: a mismatch where there is no reason to assume fundamental change. So innovation – in both product and process – is needed. Yet…
Lessons from the Vanguard: Procurement
Dudley was unique within the New Care Models programme for using a large-scale procurement exercise. This exercise therefore offers lessons for both policy and practice. These lessons are set out in a short ‘lessons from the vanguard’ paper, joint-authored by the Strategy Unit and Dudley Clinical…
Evaluation of the Dudley New Care Models Programme
The Strategy Unit led the evaluation of the Dudley Vanguard programme. This is the final system-wide report from that work. It draws on in-depth interviews with over 20 strategic level stakeholders from the Dudley system. The report looks at both the large-scale procurement process and the…
Risk and Reward Sharing for NHS Integrated Care Systems
Risk and reward sharing is a simple and attractive concept, offering a commissioner the opportunity to co-opt and incentivise a provider to moderate growth in healthcare demand by sharing in the savings or cost over-runs. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a US government…
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…
Palliative and End of Life Care Report for Children and Young People
Commissioned by NHS England, this report describes the the characteristics and levels of resource required by children and young people (CYP) (0-25 years) with life limiting conditions and/or life threatening conditions (LLC). The scope of this report does not attempt to explain or address the…
Identifying Potential QIPP Opportunities - Dudley Example
Given the pressures within the NHS, being able to identify opportunities for efficiencies and improvements is vital to inform commissioning intentions. This report is an example of analytical work which to support commissioners. The objective of this report is to provide information to…