Health Management and Policy Alert

The health and social care white paper explained

The King's Fund - 

This long read describes the main proposals of the Department of Health and Social Care's white paper 'Integration and innovation: working together to improve health and social care for all' published on 11 February 2021. It also sets out The King's Fund's initial assessment of the proposals and their implications for the health and care system.

• Read it now

Healthcare for the Armed Forces community: a forward view

NHS England - 
This guidance is a companion document to the NHS Long Term Plan, outlining the commitments NHS England and NHS Improvement is making to improve the health and wellbeing of the Armed Forces community, serving personnel (regulars and reservists), veterans and their families.

• Guidance

Looking ahead 2021: reset, partnerships, recovery

Wilmington Healthcare - 
This white paper explores some emerging trends within the UK health care system, some of which will establish some of the future policy that will come to fruition in 2021 and change the NHS landscape.

• Report

Resource allocation in public sector programmes: does the value of a life differ between governmental departments?

Office of Health Economics (OHE) - 
This report examines whether there are differences in the value of life estimates recommended for use across government departments in Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, the Netherlands, and the UK. The departments of interest were those known to use some form of valuation of human life: health, social care, transport, and environment. For each country, a literature review was conducted to identify evidence from technical reports, guidelines, and tools published directly by government departments indicating methods for conducting impact assessments or appraisals.

• Report
• Summary

What's next for the NHS? Building the resilience of the health and care system

Reform - 
A year into the pandemic and with the benefit of some hindsight, this report argues that too little consideration was given to the implications of a complete reallocation of resources away from ‘business as usual’. This report, produced jointly with Edge Health, explores the scale of the challenges the NHS faces following the pandemic.

• Report
• Summary

Impact assessment of the Mental Capacity (Amendment) Act 2019

Department of Health and Social Care -
This impact ssessment is an updated assessment of the Mental Capacity (Amendment) Act 2019. It provides an assessment of Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards at present and fully funded, as well as for Liberty Protection Safeguards as set out in the act.

• Report
• Department of Health and Social Care - publications

NHS Reset: a new direction for health and care

NHS Confederation - 

Bringing together NHS Confederation members and partners, the NHS Reset campaign has convened the health and care system to reflect on the learning from the last six months of the Covid-19 pandemic and what it means for the future. This report identifies five factors it believes will help to fundamentally reset the way health and care is planned, commissioned and delivered: honesty and realism: extra funding; a lighter, leaner culture; integrating health and care; and tackling health inequalities.

• Report
• Press release
• NHS Reset

 

How might Covid-19 affect the number of GPs available to see patients in England?

Health Foundation -
This research reveals that one in three GPs who singlehandedly manage a GP practice are at high risk of death from Covid-19. It estimates that this could potentially leave 710,043 patients without face-to-face appointments with their GPs if those at high risk take the difficult decision to limit direct patient contact. It argues that CCGs must ensure that they are aware of gaps in face-to-face provision of core general practice services, and must work with practices and primary care networks to find solutions.

• Briefing
• Health Foundation - press release

Strategic Health Authorities and regions: lessons from history

Nuffield Trust -
In 2019, NHS England and NHS Improvement aligned to operate as a single organisation, resulting in the creation of seven regional teams. But this is not the first time national oversight of health care has been supported by these kinds of regional bodies. This report considers what lessons might be learned from recent previous experiences, what works, and what are the pitfalls for this kind of intermediate-level management. A range of senior representatives who were responsible for running regional health authorities in their previous incarnation were interviewed for the report and the issues were discussed with people working in other parts of the health system hierarchy at that time.

• Report
• Nuffield Trust - publications

Time to be radical? : the view from system leaders on the future of ‘system by default’

NHS Confederation -
The NHS Confederation’s ICS Network conducted a poll to assess the direction of travel systems themselves would like to see, beyond the emergency response to Covid-19 and towards a possible future vision. The results of the poll are outlined in this report.

• Report
• NHS Confederation - publications