Health Management and Policy Alert

The state of health care report: what you need to know

NHS Confederation - 

This briefing provides a summary and analysis of the Care Quality Commission's annual report on the state of health and care in England.

• Briefing

The state of health care and adult social care in England 2021/22

Care Quality Commission - 

This year's annual assessment is that the health and care system is gridlocked and unable to operate effectively. Most people are still receiving good care when they can access it – too often, however, people are not able to access the care they need. Without action now, staff retention will continue to decline across health and care, increasing pressure across the system and leading to worse outcomes for people. Services will be further stretched, and people will be at greater risk of harm as staff try to deal with the consequences of a lack of access to community services, including adult social care.

• Report
• Press release

 

Pathfinder 2022: faster, further and fairer

Target Ovarian Cancer - 

This report shows that although there have been significant improvements over the years for women with ovarian cancer, not enough progress has been made in diagnosis, awareness, treatment and support. It reveals that if diagnosis was faster, further support was available and access to treatment was fairer, there could be potential for more women to survive, live well with ovarian cancer and be supported from diagnosis and throughout treatment.

• Report
• Press release

Building an organisational culture of continuous improvement: learning from the evaluation of the NHS partnership with Virginia Mason Institute

The Health Foundation -
This long read contains an evaluation of the NHS partnership with Virginia Mason Institute, which examined how five NHS trusts in England attempted to build a culture of continuous improvement, provides important lessons about how to plan and implement an organisation-wide approach to improvement. It outlines some of the key learning from the evaluation and offers recommendations for national policymakers and local systems leaders.

• Long read

Our plan for patients

Department of Health and Social Care -
This policy paper details the government’s plans for the NHS and social care to deliver for patients, this winter and next. It covers four areas: ambulances; backlogs; care; and doctors and dentists.

• Policy paper
• Department of Health and Social Care - publications

Dismissed for too long: the impact of migraine on children & young people

Migraine Trust - 

An estimated one in ten children are living with migraine. This potentially limits their development and ability to take part in education, social activities, and other important parts of growing up. It can also be hard for children to understand and explain their pain, and there are fewer treatment options for them than there are for adults. Based on a variety of workshops and surveys with children and young people who have migraine, parents and carers, and education professionals, this report highlights a clear need for better understanding of how migraine impacts children and for tailored information, guidance and support for children and young people of different ages who have migraine.

• Report
• More detail

How much is Covid-19 to blame for growing NHS waiting times?

Nuffield Trust - 

This analysis looks at access and waiting times before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. While it has accelerated a trajectory of declining NHS performance, Covid is not solely to blame for the current problems.

• Analysis
• Press release

Postoperative nutritional management among patients with oesophago-gastric cancer in England: NOGCA short report

National Oesophago-Gastric Cancer Audit (NOGCA) - 

This report provides insight into current postoperative nutritional practices in ten (27.8 per cent) oesophago-gastric cancer specialist centres across England, based on 617 patients who underwent curative surgery after being diagnosed between April 2019 and March 2020. The report found that, for patients who had oesophagectomy, the most commonly reported nutritional management strategy was enteral nutrition delivered via a jejunostomy during the admission and continued on discharge (51.0 per cent). It also found that the majority of oesophagectomy patients (83.9 per cent) had a jejunostomy or received parenteral nutrition during their surgical admission.

• Report
• More detail

National Audit of Dementia: memory assessment service spotlight audit 2021

Royal College of Psychiatrists - 

This report looks at community-based memory assessment services in England and Wales. It found that the average waiting time from referral to diagnosis has increased to 17.7 weeks since 2019, up from 13 weeks. Other key findings include: over 70 per cent of services experienced periods of closure, and over 80 per cent had staff redeployed during 2020; as part of their initial assessment, 61 per cent of patients had a discussion recorded about their eyesight, 58 per cent had a discussion recorded about hearing, and 76 per cent had a falls history discussed and recorded; and CT/MRI scans were requested for 47 per cent of patients, with variation in requests of 0-97.4 per cent of patients per service. This range implies that variation is at service/protocol level, rather than assessed as appropriate in each case.

• Report
• More detail

The distribution of doctor quality: evidence from cardiologists in England

Institute of Fiscal Studies

There is widespread and unexplained variation in the outcomes of similar patients across place and providers in all developed health systems. This paper provides new evidence on the role senior doctors play in determining patient outcomes. It exploits within-hospital quasi-random assignment of patients to senior doctors following a heart attack to estimate the effectiveness of individual doctors, and to estimate returns to experience for these doctors. 

• Paper
• More detail