Health Management and Policy Alert

Returning the NHS to an even keel

Royal College of Physicians - 

This briefing provides insight into the challenges facing medical specialties. It shows that almost half of physician specialities, including cardiology, gastroenterology and rheumatology, expect to be working at less than previous pre-Covid activity levels for at least 12 months or more. The briefing captures several aspects of restarting activity including specialty capacity, adaptations to services, co-dependencies. It also provides an insight into potential capacity scenarios in genitourinary medicine and rheumatology.

• Briefing
• More detail

Recovery position: what next for the NHS?

NHS Providers - 

This report, based on the first full survey of NHS trust leaders since Covid-19 started, sets out the scale of increased demand and the dramatic loss of capacity many trusts are now facing as the NHS juggles treating Covid-19 patients with restarting the full range of services. The report shows that, while trusts are restoring services as fast as they can, some trusts – particularly acute hospitals –  believe this restoration will take more than six months.

• Report
• Press release

Supporting trainers, supporting doctors, supporting patients: progress since the postgraduate medical foundation programme review

Health Education England - 

This resource pack has been developed to help student doctors into foundation training and support them during the programme. It contains information and guidance that will help new doctors as they start their training in August 2020, as well as those currently in the foundation training programme.

• Resource pack
• Press release

E-guide for financing health promoting services

EuroHealthNet - 

Covid-19, as well as other diseases, require serious investments in prevention and health promotion. This e-guide illustrates a spectrum of approaches to mobilise resources to finance the delivery of such health-promoting services that benefit health and wellbeing for all.

• E-guide

Coronavirus: overseas health and social care workforce

House of Commons Library - 

This briefing paper considers the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the overseas health and social care workforce. The paper discusses the measures used to increase numbers of overseas staff during the pandemic, the immigration measures introduced for health and social care workers, and the potential implications for overseas recruitment.

• Briefing paper
• More detail

Coronavirus and the economic value of human life or ... Is the lockdown worth it?

Institute of Economic Affairs - 

This briefing examines the ongoing argument about easing or ending the lockdown restrictions and considers numerous factors that will affect government decisions. It emphasises the importance of putting a monetary value on life as a tool to make cost-benefit analyses about the effectiveness of lockdown and makes clear that while people may feel squeamish about looking at human life in financial terms, such calculations are necessary to make the most of limited resources in the fairest and most effective way.

• Briefing
• Press release

Gambling regulation: problem gambling and protecting vulnerable people

House of Commons Public Accounts Committee - 

There are an estimated 395,000 problem gamblers in the UK, with a further 1.8 million people ‘at risk’. The effects can have devastating consequences on people and their families, including financial loss, relationship breakdowns, criminality and suicide. This report finds that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the Gambling Commission have failed to adequately protect consumers at a time of considerable change in the sector, as gambling increasingly moves online and new games become popular.

• Report
• Press release

 

Policy alert: Living standards, poverty and inequality in the UK: 2020

Institute for Fiscal Studies - 

This report examines how living standards – most commonly measured by households’ incomes – were changing in the UK up to approximately the eve of the current Covid-19 crisis, using the latest official household income data covering years up to 2018–19. It particularly focuses on how this differed for different groups, and what this meant for poverty and inequality. The report gives a comprehensive account of where we stood before the current crisis, including for groups who we now know have subsequently had their economic lives turned upside down.

• Report
• More detail

 

Supporting residents in retirement housing and extra care housing who experience loneliness: an A-Z of examples

Housing Local Improvement Network (Housing LIN) - 

This briefing sets out who is deemed 'extremely vulnerable' and, in the light of latest government guidance on shielding, provides a section with an A-Z of examples of practice of how residents in retirement/sheltered and extra care housing are experiencing loneliness and isolation, and the creative ways in which operators have organised a range of scheme-based and virtual activities to support these residents' independence, health and wellbeing, and to help keep them connected during the pandemic.

• Briefing
• More detail

Evaluating social prescribing

Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services -
This briefing provides a review of the research methods and approaches used to evaluate UK-based social prescribing interventions in recent years, to inform health care and social services professionals, as well as organisations delivering social prescribing interventions and those conducting evaluations of them. It aims to give an overview of how social prescribing has been evaluated, and what can be learned from this.

• Briefing
• Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services - publications