Integrated care is seen as critical to delivering better quality services for patients and service users and a key element of health policies in the UK. However, the evidence base suggests a fragmented picture, with variations in definitions and implementations limiting what can be learned and applied elsewhere. This new report, Crossing Boundaries: Improving integrated [read the full story…]
A timely report from the Nuffield Trust details the background to the current policy on personal health budgets (due to become effective in April 2014) and some important learning for commissioners and policy makers. From next year, clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) will be required to offer personal health budgets to patients receiving continuing health care [read the full story…]
Introduction Patient safety has featured heavily in the news recently, with the Mid Staffordshire inquiry, childrens heart surgery in Leeds and the investigation into deaths of babies at Furness General Hospital. It is a top priority for commissioners. The Health Foundation recently published an evidence review Involving patients in improving safety (1). This report follows [read the full story…]
Introduction This report, published by the Patient Information Forum (PIF) and its accompanying briefings, is aimed at policy makers, commissioners, and information specialists. It is informed by 300 research papers and experts in the area of patient information, including representatives from NHS Choices, General Practice, Informed Medical Decisions Foundation, the Health Foundation, and the Information [read the full story…]
Rational commissioning This report describes a project, led by Right Care, to involve surgeons in the commissioning decision-making process, because observations made by the Department of Health and Surgical Specialty Associations showed that there were inconsistencies in the rates of elective surgical procedures between Primary Care Trusts, and that sometimes existing surgical procedures were “classified [read the full story…]
Involving people with learning disabilities in research that affects them is part of the tradition of engaging with communities to ensure that there is ‘nothing about us without us’ – a key plank of the valuing people strategy in the UK. This U.S. study set out to consider how academics understand the best way to [read the full story…]
Getting feedback about interventions from people with learning disabilities involves a number of challenges, including of course communication difficulties The researchers in this study were interested in how occupational therapists (OT’s) gathered feedback from people who used their services. They looked at this by asking 70 OT’s to complete a questionnaire and a subset of [read the full story…]
We have posted before about inclusive research projects, including the work of MyLife My Choice looking at annual health checks and work to involve and engage people in secure settings in research findings. The authors of this study worked with people involved in research about how they support each other. They were looking at a [read the full story…]
Physical interventions are still widely used in learning disability services, with BILD estimating their use in around half of all people with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour. The experience of people with learning disabilities of such interventions is not something that has been reported widely in the literature, but the researchers in this study set [read the full story…]
This study of older people’s wishes and experiences of commissioning health and personal care services published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation was conducted by researchers from the London School of Economics. Key aims of the research: The aim was to understand how far, and with what effect, older people were involved in commissioning: 1. to [read the full story…]
