Health Management and Policy Alert

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

Euston, we have a problem: is Britain ready for an infrastructure revolution?

Resolution Foundation -
The centrepiece of the new government’s first Budget is expected to be an ‘infrastructure revolution’ – spending at least an additional £100 billion over the next five years on public investment. This report considers how the money should be spent in order to maximise its impact, including improving access to health care. It considers how the £100bn increase stacks up with public investment historically and compares to other countries; what the key priorities should be for future investment; and how the government should invest to get the maximum return for the taxpayer.

• Report
• Resolution Foundation - publications

NHS financial management and sustainability

National Audit Office - 

The NHS is treating more patients but has not yet achieved the fundamental transformation in services and finance regime needed to meet rising demand. To be sustainable, the NHS needs to manage patient demand (including how long patients wait) and the quality and safety of services within the resources given to it. The report: summarises the financial and operational performance of the NHS as a whole in England in 2018-19; examines the financial performance of local NHS organisations; and examines NHS service transformation and sustainability.

• Report
• Press release

UK health research analysis 2018

Health Research Classification System -
This analysis consists of more than 22,500 health and biomedical research active awards from 146 organisations accounting for an estimated expenditure of almost £4.8 billion in the calendar year 2018. This report summarises the main findings from the analysis, including estimations of total UK health R&D expenditure and an assessment of international funding.

• Report
• Health Research Classification System - publications

 

QualityWatch: quality and inequality

Nuffield Trust -
This analysis finds people living in the most deprived areas of England experience a worse quality of NHS care and poorer health outcomes than people living in the least deprived areas. These include spending longer in A&E and having a worse experience of making a GP appointment.

• Report
• Nuffield Trust - press release

Hindsight 2020: lessons on setting targets in health and social care

Nuffield Trust - 

After the 2015 general election, the NHS and social care were set a number of targets on where they needed to be by 2020 (Shared delivery plan: 2015 to 2020). Now that year has started, this briefing looks at how they have fared over that time, looking at a sample of key targets. Which have been met, which are being missed, and which by now no longer exist? The briefing then looks at the lessons that need to be learned.

• Briefing
• More detail

Striving to deliver

NHS Providers - 

Trust leaders are warning that they are more concerned than ever before about the level of risk they will need to manage for patients and their staff this winter. This briefing is an assessment of readiness looking into the areas of concern facing the NHS and the extensive planning they and their local partners have put into place to mitigate this.

• Briefing
• Press release

National Vascular Registry: 2019 annual report

Royal College of Surgeons of England - 

This is the seventh annual report since the National Vascular Registry was launched in 2013. It contains comparative information on five major interventions for vascular disease: lower limb bypass; lower limb angioplasty/stenting; major lower limb amputation; carotid endarterectomy; and repair of aortic aneurysms, including elective infra-renal, ruptured infra-renal, and more complex aneurysms.

• Report
• More detail

Saving lives, improving mothers’ care: lessons learned to inform maternity care from the UK and Ireland Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths and Morbidity 2015-17

MBRRACE-UK - 

This is the sixth annual report produced for the Maternal, Newborn and Infant Clinical Outcome Review Programme, run by the MBRRACE-UK collaboration. The authors analysed 2.3m pregnancies from 2015-2017 in the UK and Ireland. During that three year period, 209 women in the UK and Ireland died during their pregnancies or up to six weeks afterwards from pregnancy-related causes. This is equivalent to just over nine women per 100,000. The leading cause of maternal deaths in the UK is still cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks, heart failure and heart rhythm problems, and there has been no reduction in maternal deaths from heart related causes for more than 15 years.

• Report
• More detail