Thursday 29 October 2015

Hospital trusts productivity in the English NHS

"In 2009, the NHS Chief Executive warned that a potential funding gap of £20 billion should be met by extensive efficiency savings by March 2015. Our study investigates possible drivers of differential Trust performance (productivity) for the years 2010/11-2012/13."

Hospital trusts productivity in the English NHS: uncovering possible drivers of productivity variations: CHE Research Paper 117
MJ Aragon Aragon, A Castelli, J Gaughan
Centre for Health Economics, University of York
October 2015

Read more here.

Review of innovative medicines and medical technologies

"The review has explored the question of accelerated access through four workstreams spanning the development pathway and a fifth focussing on patient engagement in all parts of the pathway. Each workstream has looked across issues concerning drugs, devices, diagnostics and digital health products."

Accelerated access review: Interim report: Review of innovative medicines and medical technologies, supported by Wellcome Trust
October 2015

Read more here.

Wednesday 28 October 2015

People-centred health systems in the WHO European Region

"This publication is a collection of personal stories describing experiences in health systems associated with improved health and well-being. While these examples are not intended to replace technical guidance on how to organize, finance or deliver health and social services, they emphasize people-centred approaches from the perspective of patients and carers."

People-centred health systems in the WHO European Region: Voices of patients and carers
World Health Organization
October 2015

Read more here.

Sustainable care pathways guidance

In 2015 the Coalition for Sustainable Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices created an innovative set of guidance to allow users to consistently appraise environmental impacts of health care pathways.

The guidance has been developed to enable sustainability to be considered when designing new models of care, redesigning existing models or investigating the benefits of prevention.

Read more here.


Local solutions to national challenges

"CCGs are now firmly established as key players in delivering quality health services and shaping the long-term future of the NHS. They are local doctors who understand the needs of their areas, focusing on the national priorities of sickness prevention, public health, self-care and care delivered in the community."

Local solutions to national challenges: Delivering our commitment to patients
NHS Clinical Commissioners
October 2015

Read more here.

Wednesday 21 October 2015

The 2015 Quality of Death Index

"This is the second edition of the Index, updating and expanding upon the first iteration, which was published in 2010. The new and expanded 2015 Index evaluates 80 countries using 20 quantitative and qualitative indicators across five categories: the palliative and healthcare environment, human resources, the affordability of care, the quality of care and the level of community engagement. To build the Index the EIU used official data and existing research for each country, and also interviewed palliative care experts from around the world."

The 2015 Quality of Death Index: Ranking palliative care across the world
The Economist Intelligence Unit
October 2015

Read more here.

Focus on: People with mental ill health and hospital use

"Our aim for this work is to improve understanding of how people with mental ill health use hospital services differently from those without. The differences observed should help those planning services so that resources are adequately assigned and influence future policies to continue striving towards parity of esteem. The analyses shown here may also provide a new way of understanding the quality of care for those with mental ill health and provide a way to track whether things get better or worse over time."

Focus on: People with mental ill health and hospital use: Exploring disparities in hospital use for physical healthcare
H Dorning, A Davies, I Blunt
The Health Foundation, Nuffield Trust
October 2015

Read more here.

Commissioning excellent nutrition and hydration 2015 – 2018

This document provides examples of commissioning approaches that can be adopted locally to improve the nutrition and hydration care of the population. A resources repository is available to support commissioners. It can be accessed here.

Commissioning excellent nutrition and hydration 2015 – 2018
NHS England
October 2015

Read more here.

Tuesday 20 October 2015

Tools to help provide care and support at home

"These pages provide useful tools, resources and examples of innovative approaches to enabling older people and people with disabilities to live well and independently in their own homes. They provide specific information across 8 key areas for adult social care commissioners, housing and care providers, primary care services and NHS hospital trusts on shaping, commissioning, funding, and delivering a range of care and support solutions for people living in their own homes."

Find out more here.

Monday 19 October 2015

Exploring the GP ‘added value’ in commissioning

"In our observation of various meetings, we found a degree of complexity associated with CCG structures and governance arrangements. Unlike PCTs (their immediate predecessor organisations), CCGs are often quite different from one another, with different structures and distribution of responsibilities between the various committees, sub-committees etc. We were often unable to clearly define which body was responsible for which type of decisions and who was a member of a particular body."

Exploring the GP ‘added value’ in commissioning: What works, in what circumstances, and how? Final Report
I McDermott, A Coleman, N Perkins, D Osipovic, C Petsoulas, K Checkland
PRUComm
October 2015

Read more here.

Patients’ perspectives on the medical primary–secondary care interface

"Patients should be the focus of any transfer of care between primary and secondary systems. From their perspective, areas for improvement may be classified into four domains that should usefully guide future work aimed at improving quality at this important interface."

Patients’ perspectives on the medical primary–secondary care interface: systematic review and synthesis of qualitative research
R Sampson, J Cooper, R Barbour, R Polson, P Wilson
BMJ Open, 2015, 5:e008708

Read more here.

Prioritising patients for bariatric surgery

"This study extends our understanding of the publics’ preferences for priority setting to the context of bariatric surgery, and derives priority weights that could be used to assist bodies responsible for commissioning bariatric services."

Prioritising patients for bariatric surgery: building public preferences from a discrete choice experiment into public policy
JA Whitty, et al.
BMJ Open, 2015, 5:e008919

Read more here.

Commissioning standards integrated urgent care

"These standards build on the success of NHS 111 and will help to deliver the benefits for all patients set out in the Urgent and Emergency Care review led by Sir Bruce Keogh. The intent is to enable commissioners to deliver a functionally integrated 24/7 urgent care service that is the ‘front door’ of the NHS and which provides the public with access to both treatment and clinical advice. This will include NHS 111 providers and GP Out-of-hours services, community services, ambulance services, emergency departments and social care."

Commissioning standards integrated urgent care
NHS England
September 2015

Read more here.

Thursday 15 October 2015

The state of health care and adult social care in England 2014/15

"The sectors we regulate face significant challenges. Our concerns are amplified by our finding that many services do not yet have the leadership and culture required to deliver safe, high-quality care. To survive and thrive will require resilience, innovation and creativity, supported by great leadership."

The state of health care and adult social care in England 2014/15
Care Quality Commission
October 2015

Read more here.

A cost/benefit analysis of self-care systems in the European Union

"The study offers added value to existing literature on self-care, which tends to focus on pharmaceutical treatments for the use in self-care. By assessing the effectiveness of self-care treatments, assessing self-care initiatives in cost-benefit analysis and developing a methodlogy for transferability of best-practice self-care initiatives, scientific evidence could be supplemented by a practical guide for policy-makers for identifying and transferring best-practices in self-care. The results highlight that political commitment to self-care is essential for the implementation and uptake of self-care. Further, it shows that for successful self-care initiatives a change in “culture” is necessary, so that patients take responsibility for their own health. In this context, patient information and clear communication is of particular relevance."

A cost/benefit analysis of self-care systems in the European Union
H Ostermann, AT Renner, J Bobek, P Schneider, S Vogler
European Union
April 2015

Read more here.

Wednesday 14 October 2015

The English Indices of Deprivation 2015

"This report outlines the main results from the Indices of Deprivation 2015, including the overall Index of Multiple Deprivation 2015, and provides examples and guidance on how to use and interpret the datasets. The accompanying technical report presents the conceptual framework of the new Indices of Deprivation 2015; the methodology for creating the domains and the overall Index of Multiple Deprivation; the quality assurance carried out to ensure reliability of the data outputs; and the component indicators and domains. All of the supporting documents and datasets for the Indices of Deprivation 2015 are available here."

The English Indices of Deprivation 2015
T Smith, M Noble, S Noble, G Wright, D McLennan, E Plunkett
Department for Communities and Local Government
September 2015

Read more here.

People with mental ill health and hospital use

"Our aim for this work is to improve understanding of how people with mental ill health use hospital services differently from those without. The differences observed should help those planning services so that resources are adequately assigned and influence future policies to continue striving towards parity of esteem."

QualityWatch: Focus on: People with mental ill health and hospital use: Exploring disparities in hospital use for physical healthcare
H Dorning, A Davies, I Blunt
The Health Foundation, Nuffield Trust
October 2015

Read more here.

Helping NHS providers improve productivity in elective care

"Improving productivity does not mean simple cost cutting: it means increasing the efficiency of elective care while at the same time improving or maintaining its quality."

Helping NHS providers improve productivity in elective care
Monitor
October 2015

Read more here.

Shared principles for redesigning the local health and care landscape

"This document builds on previous work by NHS England’s Planning and Delivering Service Changes for Patients which offered good practice guidance to health commissioners on developing proposals for major service changes and configuration. Our five key principles are for use by the whole system. It aims to provide local system leaders – local authorities, health and wellbeing boards, clinical commissioning groups, NHS and care providers and patients and the public – with shared principles to ensure that service redesign meet a number of fundamental requirements to assure themselves, their partners and their communities that proposals are focused on improving services and health and wellbeing outcomes."

Shared principles for redesigning the local health and care landscape
Local Government Association
September 2015

Read more here.

Tuesday 13 October 2015

The European health report 2015

"The gaps between the highest and lowest values reported in the Region for the Health 2020 indicators linked to social determinants of health – infant mortality, life expectancy, primary school enrolment and unemployment – have shrunk, but the absolute differences between countries remain large."

The European health report 2015: Targets and beyond - reaching new frontiers in evidence
WHO Regional Office for Europe
October 2015

Read more here.

Indicators of quality of care in general practices in England

"The review makes a series of recommendations to government, including:

  • developing a small set of indicators that show information about what matters most to the public, health care professionals and those accountable for the quality of general practice
  • consolidating the multiple existing websites currently sharing information about general practice quality, with information selected and presented to meet the differing needs of health care professionals and the public
  • developing a national strategy for improving the quality of general practice and primary care that guides indicator development, with progress assessed through the Secretary of State’s annual report
  • providing support to those working in general practice about how to understand and use information to improve patient care."

Indicators of quality of care in general practices in England: An independent review for the Secretary of State for Health
J Dixon, E Spencelayh, A Howells, A Mandel, F Gille
The Health Foundation
October 2015

Read more here.

Measuring the performance of local health systems

"This report summarises the results of a rapid review of how to assess the performance of local health systems through the lens of clinical commissioning groups (CCGs). The review was commissioned by the Department of Health who asked The King’s Fund to advise on the ‘first principles’ of a local health system scorecard for the NHS in England."

Measuring the performance of local health systems: a review for the Department of Health
C Ham, V Raleigh, C Foot, R Robertson, H Alderwick
The King's Fund
October 2015

Read more here.

Context for successful quality improvement

"Building on a series of thought pieces – published by the Health Foundation in Perspectives on context – this best evidence review combines the ideas of receptive and non-receptive contexts for change, with a psychological perspective and the proposition that social context is the key facilitator of quality improvement. The review also considers context at structural levels within the health care system:

  • macro – the system level
  • meso – the organisation level
  • micro – the clinical team level.

Crucially, the review considers how all of these factors combine to impact upon the success and sustainability of quality improvement efforts."

Context for successful quality improvement
N Fulop, G Robert
The Health Foundation
October 2015

Read more here.

Wednesday 7 October 2015

A new home for public health services for children aged 0-5

"This resource provides an overview of the work that is taking place both locally and nationally to safely transfer children’s public health commissioning responsibilities for children aged 0 to 5 from NHS England to local authorities and some of the opportunities available following the transition period. It provides a snapshot of information found in existing factsheets and supporting documents."

A new home for public health services for children aged 0-5: A resource for local authorities
Local Government Association
September 2015

Read more here.

The cost of the cuts: a social impact tool for local authorities

"A major research project funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has catalogued and explored the implications of local council savings over the past five years. The aim of the project was to analyse the extent to which the range of measures – activities focused on reducing future needs and costs, reductions in services, changes in eligibility thresholds and consolidations of facilities – has impacted on poorer groups of service users. The result is a social impact tool which enables councils in England and Scotland to replicate a key part of the quantitative analysis undertaken for the study. This user guide introduces that social impact tool."

The cost of the cuts: a social impact tool for local authorities: User guide
A Hastings, N Bailey, G Bramley, M Gannon, D Watkins
Joseph Rowntree Foundation
October 2015

Read more here.

Making time in general practice

"This report was commissioned by NHS England as part of this wider work to deliver the NEW Deal, strengthening primary care and releasing capacity to introduce new care models."

Making time in general practice
H Clay, R Stern
NHS Alliance
October 2015

Read more here.

Tuesday 6 October 2015

Waiting time prioritisation: Evidence from England

"Following initiatives in other OECD countries, the English NHS and other healthcare systems faced with increasing excess demand for elective surgery should put more emphasis in encouraging further prioritisation on the list and consider formal policies to enforce this."

Waiting time prioritisation: Evidence from England: CHE Research Paper 114
N Gutacker, R Cookson, L Siciliani
Centre for Health Economics
University of York
September 2015

Read more here.

Monday 5 October 2015

Integration and continuity of primary care: polyclinics and alternatives

"In recent years the NHS has introduced new organisations and ways of working in order to improve the care of people with complex health needs. These approaches include general practitioner-led health centres, ‘case management’ (where a community matron or similar co-ordinates patients’ care) and (especially in London) ‘polyclinics’. We wanted to find out how these approaches compare in terms of improving the co-ordination of patient care across the range of services."

Integration and continuity of primary care: polyclinics and alternatives – a patient-centred analysis of how organisation constrains care co-ordination
R Sheaff, J Halliday, J Ovretveit, R Byng, M Exworthy, S Peckham, S Asthana
Health Services and Delivery Research, 2015, 3(35)

Read more here.

Towards a new future for general practice

"This report will not only examine the current problems in general practice, but also look at the future of primary care within a rapidly changing system. We will set out our principles and vision and – by examining what patients want and how practices and practitioners should be configured and assisted to respond – put forward the key actions that will be required to enable us to realise that future vision."

Responsive, safe and sustainable: Towards a new future for general practice
British Medical Association
2015

Read more here.

Universal health visitor reviews

"This document is primarily intended for those in LAs responsible for the commissioning of 0 to 5 public health services and for providers of those services. Its purpose is to help explain and provide the context of Regulations relating to the mandatory delivery of five key child development reviews as set out in the Healthy Child Programme (HCP)."

Read more here.

Evidence based policy making and the ‘art’ of commissioning

"To influence policy makers’ decisions, researchers need to:
1) learn more about local policy makers’ priorities
2) develop relationships of mutual benefit
3) use verbal instead of written communication
4) work with intermediaries such as public health consultants and
5) co-produce local evaluations."

Evidence based policy making and the ‘art’ of commissioning – how English healthcare commissioners access and use information and academic research in ‘real life’ decision-making: an empirical qualitative study
L Wye, E Brangan, A Cameron, J Gabbay, JH Klein, C Pope
BMC Health Services Research, 2015, 15:430

Read more here.

Sunday 4 October 2015

Putting integrated care into practice: the North West London experience

"Policy-makers must set realistic expectations, provide sustained and tailored support, and allow time for clinicians and managers to deliver changes to the ways in which patients are cared for. Alongside this, there is a need for careful and robust monitoring of progress over the longer term, feeding into local governance and accountability arrangements, so that investment and implementation deliver the transformational changes promised at the outset."

Putting integrated care into practice: the North West London experience
G Wistow, M Gaskins, H Holder, J Smith
Nuffield Trust
October 2015

Read more here.

What do leaders want from NHS Improvement?

"In May 2015, the Secretary of State for Health announced that Monitor, the regulator of NHS foundation trusts, would merge with the Trust Development Authority, which oversees other trusts – under the oversight of a single chief executive. This single body, NHS Improvement, will have regulatory and oversight duties over all NHS providers. This Viewpoint is published as the chief executive of the newly formed organisation takes up post, at a time when NHS trusts face historic financial pressure and an ambitious programme of change. The Nuffield Trust and NHS Providers asked leaders from across the health service and other key positions in health care policy-making for their advice to the first holder of this important position. Each respondent was asked to set out some priority areas for the chief executive to focus on, and how they believe he or she could deliver real help to the NHS at this difficult time."

What do leaders want from NHS Improvement?
Nuffield Trust
September 2015

Read more here.

Improving diagnosis in health care

"Despite the pervasiveness of diagnostic errors and the risk for serious patient harm, diagnostic errors have been largely unappreciated within the quality and patient safety movements in health care."

Improving diagnosis in health care
EP Balogh, BT Miller, JR Ball (eds.)
The National Academies Press
September 2015

Read more here - free registration required.