I was quoted in a recent Guardian newspaper article which described a London Clinical Commissioning Group’s wasteful use of external management consultants. That in turn came after I spoke at the CASS Business School seminar on the same topic on 9th May this year. In this blog, I set out why I believe the NHS is enticed by management consultancies and I offer an alternative option of ‘internal consultancy’ as practised by the Strategy Unit.

With the end of the New Care Models programme there is an opportunity to reflect on what has been learnt at local level. The Strategy Unit has worked closely with Dudley throughout its programme. So we were invited to present our reflections at Dudley’s recent conference. Our headline? Culture over contracts.  

Coinciding nicely with the NHS 70th Birthday celebrations and the parallel discussions of ‘where next and how to do it better’ for the NHS, last week saw the publication of our evidence review on models of integrating care.  We also presented a poster, sharing our evidence-informed principles of integrated care at the Health Services Research UK conference.

Introduction

There is a large group of people in this country for whom average life expectancy is hugely less than the rest of the population. The drivers of this life expectancy gap (up to 18 years) range across all causes of death. This group also ends up utilising emergency acute hospital care at a rate that is up to 3 times that of the rest of the population. And we know who is in this group…we don’t need ‘predictive algorithms’ to try to find them. They are people in our care …people in contact with our mental health services.

There are many of lessons we can learn from Accountable Care Organisations when thinking about ICS contracts says Paul Taylor.

Our latest research paper explores the impact of the different options for integration implemented as a result of the Transforming Community Services policy in 2010. This accompanying commentary reflects on potential implications for the current policy drive towards Integrated Care Systems.

Find out about our recent summit on intelligence to drive improvement in healthcare and comment on our working design principles.

We recently shared highlights from our realist synthesis on primary care-led integrated models, at the Health Policy and Planning Network workshop. Take a look at our presentation for a flavour of our findings ahead of publication later in the summer.

The resurgence of uncertainty

In 1992, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama published his book The End of History and the Last Man. In the book, Fukuyama surveyed global trends at the end of the Cold War and concluded that history had ended: that humanity, having experimented with and discarded different arrangements, had now universally and finally settled upon variants of liberal democracy and capitalism.

The resurgence of uncertainty

In 1992, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama published his book The End of History and the Last Man. In the book, Fukuyama surveyed global trends at the end of the Cold War and concluded that history had ended: that humanity, having experimented with and discarded different arrangements, had now universally and finally settled upon variants of liberal democracy and capitalism.