Health Management and Policy Alert

The impact of the Covid-19 epidemic on all-cause attendances to emergency departments in two large London hospitals: an observational study

Imperial College -
This report aimed to assess how the reorganisation of hospital care and admission policies to respond to the Covid-19 epidemic affected emergency attendances and emergency hospital admissions. The report uses administrative patient level clinical hospital records from two large London hospitals from Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (St Mary’s and Charing Cross) to analyse trends in attendances to emergency departments and emergency admissions pre- and post-implementation of lock-down policies in England.

• Report
• Imperial College - publications

How to improve the health and wellbeing of the UK population: devolution and reform of health and social care

ResPublica -
This report, which was largely completed before the Covid-19 outbreak, aims to provide comprehensive and actionable recommendations for the reform of health and social care. It looks at the role of individual circumstances in determining health outcomes, the operational measures that can improve patient outcomes, and population health and the need to streamline responsibilities so it is clear who is accountable for performance.

• Report
• ResPublica - publications

Helping the NHS recover from Covid-19

Royal College of Surgeons of England -
The Presidents of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine have issued a joint memorandum to MPs calling for urgent action to help the NHS recover from Covid. It argues for planning now to deal with a ‘hidden waiting list’ of patients who have not yet been referred. The memorandum also features early results from a survey of surgeons, which indicates a quarter do not yet have access to “Covid-light” facilities for their patients.

• Memorandum
• Royal College of Surgeons of England - press release

Getting the NHS back on track: planning for the next phase of Covid-19

NHS Confederation - 

This report outlines the key challenges that local organisations will face over the coming months. It also suggests some changes in policy and practice that will be required as the NHS prepares to restart a wide range of services either paused or stopped when the pandemic struck. The key challenges identified are: funding; capacity; rehabilitation; health inequalities; regulation and inspections; system working; and managing public expectations.

• Report
• More detail

Operation Covid-19: why did Whitehall turn to military planners?

Policy Exchange -
This paper looks at some key elements of the military approach to planning. It argues that the cooperative and collaborative lessons identified by the Covid-19 crisis should be used to improve future responses and to protect the operational deliverers in the NHS.

• Report
• Policy Exchange - publications

Returning NHS waiting times to 18 weeks for routine treatment: the scale of the challenge pre-Covid-19

Health Foundation  - 

Returning to ‘normal’ levels of activity is expected to take some time and, even before Covid-19, there were substantial challenges with waiting times. As the NHS looks to start to recover services, this long read looks at the context in which planned treatment will recommence. Specifically, it looks at what would have been needed – if the NHS were operating within a ‘business as usual model’ – to return to delivering the standard of 92 per cent of patients being treated within 18 weeks, given the waiting lists and waiting times backlog that had built up by January 2020.

• Long read

The new normal: balancing Covid-19 and other healthcare needs

NHS Providers -
This briefing sets out the complexities NHS trusts may face in reintroducing more services safely alongside the sustained, continuing, risk presented by Covid-19. It outlines five questions that the NHS must consider going forward.

• Briefing
• NHS Providers - publications

Strengthening hospital capacity for the Covid-19 pandemic

Imperial College London -
This report presents the J-IDEA pandemic planner, a hospital planning tool to calculate how much capacity in terms of beds, staff and ventilators is obtained by implementing health care provision interventions affecting the management of patient care in hospitals. It shows how to assess baseline capacity, and then calculate how much capacity is gained by various health care interventions using impact estimates that are generated as part of this study.

• Report
• Imperial College - news

The Government's 2020-2021 mandate to NHS England and NHS Improvement

Department of Health and Social Care -
This document contains the government’s mandate to NHS England with its remit for NHS Improvement confirms the objectives and budget for the year ahead. The financial directions provide further details on how NHS England’s budget is broken down.

• Mandate
• Department of Health and Social Care - publications

State of child health in the UK

Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health -
This report shows that for many measures of children’s health and wellbeing, progress has stalled, or is in reverse – something rarely seen in high income countries. The authors highlight that, even where there have been notable improvements in children’s health, the UK is often lagging far behind other countries. For example, although there has been a fall in the number of emergency asthma admission rates across all four nations, the UK still has one of the highest mortality rates in Europe for children and young people with asthma.

• Report
• Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health - news