The literature on decision making is like a disaster movie highlights reel. Barely has one calamity registered before another serious misstep takes its place. Case study after case study flashes past, each with its own lessons and warnings.  

The Strategy Unit is embarking on an exciting project with WM ADASS, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Care Services in the West Midlands to explore the challenges facing domiciliary care and the opportunities that exist to transform and improve the service.

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.

The care home COVID crisis and the effects of longstanding staffing and funding shortages has meant that social care has featured heavily in the media over the last 12 months. 

Whether or not to admit a patient is one of the most routine yet important decisions a doctor in an Emergency Department (ED) makes. We might like to think that this decision is dependent solely on the clinical characteristics of the patient. But this is not the case.   

Earlier this year, the Strategy Unit reported how levels of attendances at consultant-led emergency departments dropped dramatically in the early days of the COVID pandemic. Rates crept back up during the first lockdown but never reached pre-pandemic levels, and rates fell away again as the local tiered and subsequent national lockdowns were imposed. 

Round table event, 12 July

Over a million people in the UK believe they have lingering symptoms of ‘Long Covid’, which can range from brain fog and fatigue to chest pain and breathlessness. In fact, it’s thought that one in five people with Covid will go on to develop longer term symptoms.

“What is an analyst?” 

Dr Anna Lock, Justine Wiltshire and Lucy Hawkins reflect on the Strategy Unit's innovative end of life care analysis. How can this work help clinicians to improve services?

In this blog, Fraser Battye makes the case for localism in the NHS. He tells four short stories. He suggests that these stories highlight an opportunity as the NHS enters a period of reform.