Health Management and Policy Alert

Medicines use review (MUR) service (England)

Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) - 
This briefing is aimed at health professionals outside of pharmacy and provides information on the MUR service and answers common questions about MURs.

• Briefing
• PSNC news

Police and public health: innovation in practice: an overview of collaboration across England

Public Health England (PHE) - 
This document highlights case studies of initiatives between police and public health from across the country. It was developed to stimulate discussion and sharing of good practice with a view to developing a national consensus statement on policing and public health. It is intended for use by police forces, police and crime commissioners, local authorities and NHS and as an information source for the wider public health system.

• Paper
• PHE publications

Leading my life my way: young disabled people's experiences of using services to live independent lives

Scope - 
This report finds that young disabled people are experiencing poor quality care and support planning, a lack of information and advice tailored to their specific needs and expectations. The report calls for the government to look beyond funding support for the basics in social care to ensure that young disabled people are supported and enabled to live independent lives.

• Report
• Summary
• Scope news

CCGs 2015/16 assessment for maternity and mental health

NHS England - 
The newly published ratings on mental health and maternity services have been published by NHS England on the My NHS website. The data highlights areas that are performing well and also helps to identify where improvements can be made. The ratings can be broken down by CCG and can help CCGs to self-assess more effectively and target areas in need of improvement.

• Ratings data
• NHS England news

Mental health five year forward view dashboard

NHS England - 
This dashboard brings together data from across the broad range of mental health services. This aims to provide a resource to track improvement at the CCG level and allow areas to understand where they need to target their efforts to improve services locally. The dashboard not only includes statistics from mental health services but also metrics on employment, housing and justice relating to people with mental health problems.

• Dashboard
• NHS England news

Recovering the cost of NHS treatment for overseas patients

National Audit Office (NAO) -  
This report has found that the Department of Health and the NHS, working with other parts of government, have made progress to recover more of the cost of treating overseas visitors who are not entitled to free hospital treatment but, if current trends continue and the charging rules remain the same, will not achieve the government’s ambition of recovering up to £500 million a year by 2017-18.

• Report
• Summary
• Press release

Towards improved decision support in the assessment and management of pain for people with dementia in hospital: a systematic meta-review and observational study

National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) - 
Pain and dementia are common in older people, and impaired cognitive abilities make it difficult for them to communicate their pain. Accurate pain assessment in this vulnerable group is challenging for hospital staff, but essential for appropriate management. This study reviews the literature and explores staff and carer views to identify robust methods for identifying, assessing and managing pain.

• Report
• Summary
• Abstract

Patient-level information and costing systems (PLICSs): a mixed-methods study of current practice and future potential for the NHS health economy

National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) - 
Traditionally, the cost object in health care has been either a service line (e.g. orthopaedics) or a clinical intervention (e.g. hip replacement). In the mid-2000s, the Department of Health recommended that in the future the patient should be the cost object, to enable a better analysis of cost drivers in health care, resulting in PLICSs. Monitor proposes that PLICS data will now form the basis for mandatory prices for health-care services across all care settings. This study aimed to explore the current use of PLICSs and the potential for future use of PLICSs in commissioning.

• Report
• Summary
• Abstract

Evaluation of an intervention to prevent falls

RAND Corporation - 
This report, commissioned by the US Government, evaluates the effectiveness of an intervention designed to prevent falls in the elderly, with a particular focus on fall-related injuries and on health care costs. The researchers concluded that the intervention did not have a substantial effect on health care costs. Although they did not find evidence that the intervention reduced A&E visits for fall-related injuries, they cautioned that the study was underpowered for this outcome and that a clinically meaningful effect could have gone undetected.

• Report
• RAND publications

Mapping UK mental health research funding and its contribution to global funding: a refined analysis for the UK context

RAND Europe - 
This briefing provides an analysis across the UK of government support for mental health research, with a particular emphasis on the Department of Health. This analysis builds on data collected for the project, Mapping the global mental health research system, which aimed to map the global funding of mental health research between 2009 and 2014, using bibliometric data to develop a picture of who the major funders were, what kinds of research they supported and how their strategies related to one another.

• Report
• RAND publications