Want to ease pressure in urgent care? Simply cut community services!?!
What should decision makers do with analysis that challenges deeply held assumptions? In this blog, Fraser Battye reflects on a surprising recent finding about community services.
Ghosted by an old friend
“…personal contact was a vital element in general practice from the beginning. By 1959 50% of people in England regarded their GP as a personal friend.”
Diagnosing harms?
All medicines are poisons. Everything that cures could kill if administered in the wrong doses, to the wrong people, at the wrong times, in the wrong ways.
‘To risk stratify or not risk stratify, that is the question’ (At least, it should be)
Risk stratification tools are ubiquitous in healthcare. The concept is simple and seductive.
Infant feeding problems, lockdown and attendance at Emergency Departments: what’s going on?
From our previous work, with Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation, we know that lockdown had a significant effect on attendance at Emergency Departments (ED). We also know that this effect was very unevenly distributed: some demographic groups stayed away far more than others.
Decisions to admit patients are not solely determined by clinical risk
Whether or not to admit a patient is one of the most routine yet important decisions a doctor in an Emergency Department
Strategy Unit analysis published showing changes in use of emergency departments under lockdown
We know that patterns of access to healthcare have changed during the pandemic.
Health service use in the last two years of life
Health and care services get just one opportunity to support people at the end of their life. When this support is compassionate and appropriate, unnecessary suffering can be avoided and grieving can be eased. When this is not the case, harm and distress can result. The difference in these experiences can be profound.
Evaluation of the Dudley Multidisciplinary Teams (MDTs) Summary of Final Report
Multi-disciplinary Teams (MDTs) in primary care are a core component of Dudley's care model; they are also widely used elsewhere.