Economics By Design

19/02/2024

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) provides an online visualisation tool that allows users to examine and compare the burden of disease by gender, age, year and location. A great resource!

https://www.healthdata.org/research-analysis/gbd

19/01/2024

We are often asked where to find reliable estimates of the unit costs of health and social care in the UK. One of the best resources is the Unit Costs of Health and Social Care Manual from the Personal Social Services Research Unit. The unit has been producing these data every year for nearly 20 years now. Follow the link below for more details.

https://www.pssru.ac.uk/unitcostsreport/

10/01/2024

There has been considerable debate about the economic impact of COVID-19 on mental health. Pan-European figures from YouGov suggest that the UK has been particularly badly affected. Almost two-thirds of the respondents reported COVID-19 as having had a negative impact on mental health. This compared with under half of the respondents in Germany.

Read more about this in our below article.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/impact-covid-19-mental-health-economics-by-design-9ww6e

There has been considerable debate about the economic impact of COVID-19 on mental health [1]. Pan-European figures from YouGov suggest that the UK has been particularly badly affected.

18/12/2023

In this economic lens our guest contributor Maria Stavridou discusses the use of health economics to set priorities for essential health benefits and the case for including the impact of access to health services on workforce participation and economic productivity.

The well-being of a country’s population significantly influences its economic growth and development.

Read more here:

https://www.economicsbydesign.com/health-economics-for-essential-health-benefits-impact-on-economic-productivity/

13/12/2023

In our latest economic lens, our guest contributor Maria Stavridou discusses the case for LMICs to consider the impact of access to health services on workforce participation and economic productivity when setting local priorities.

Identifying the most cost-effective interventions targeted to reducing the burden of disease in LMICs is thus vital for both health and sustainable economic growth so should workforce productivity also be considered as a factor?

Read more here: https://www.economicsbydesign.com/health-economics-for-essential-health-benefits-impact-on-economic-productivity/

Governments and health insurance providers use pooled funds to purchase essential health benefits for their citizens or insured populations.

08/12/2023

Check out the WHO's publications on risk pooling and health financing strategies here: https://www.who.int/activities/pooling

22/11/2023

For people living in England, health is increasingly strained and unequal. This great resource from The Health Foundation addresses the leading risk factors for ill health.

https://www.health.org.uk/risk-factors

16/11/2023

Five Steps to Build Value Into NHS Workforce Planning

In our view, NHS organisations at all levels need to build value into workforce planning. They can do this by:

Step 1: Building realistic workforce plans that show the gap between staff needed and staff we can afford – and having a robust conversation about bridging that gap at Executive level, rather than ignoring it and hoping it will address itself.

Step 2: Demonstrating the economic value of the health workforce to ensure that finance teams can clearly see that short-term cuts lead to short and long term increases in costs

Step 3: Investing in real, appreciative leadership from the front-line, down to central departments.

Step 4: Dual Transformation: Empowering staff to innovate to solve problems while the big redesigns are happening – because only with this will the gap be bridged.

Step 5: Defining the rules of working in an era of high activity, so that staff do not bear the brunt of decisions as to who will receive care.

Read more about Economic Workforce Planning in our recent economics lens.

Treating healthcare professionals as a cost and not an asset needs to be reversed for workforce planning and approaches in 2022.

13/11/2023

Economic Workforce Planning: Treating People as Assets, Not Costs

Pressures to cut costs are getting worse, yet it is more important than ever to reverse the trend of treating workforce as a cost and not an asset, when developing workforce plans and approaches.

Many organisations and systems that we work with see workforce as a cost. Requests to hire are scrutinised and blocked, vacancies are seen as a way of reducing overspends and capacity plans to recover backlogs are essentially just plans to “sweat the assets”.

To read more about Economic Workforce Planning, take a look at our latest economic lens, written by Colin Lewry.

https://www.economicsbydesign.com/economic-workforce-planning/

Treating healthcare professionals as a cost and not an asset needs to be reversed for workforce planning and approaches in 2022.

10/11/2023

The medical technology industry has seen massive growth over the past few decades. It is now a multi-billion dollar market, with numerous companies manufacturing and developing a large product portfolio that is transforming the medical technology sector.

Read more about medical technology here: https://www.economicsbydesign.com/medical-technology-med-tech-health-economic-value-explained/

09/11/2023

Child health hubs offer a wide range of significant benefits to the healthcare system. Notably, a service evaluation suggests that early versions of the Child health hubs successfully reduced outpatient visits by an impressive 39%, resulted in a 22% decline in accident and emergency cases, and a 17% decrease in admissions.

Read more about the integrated care for children here.
https://www.economicsbydesign.com/integrated-healthcare-for-children-the-child-health-hub/

07/11/2023

The Child Health Hub is designed to improve children's and young people's health through collaboration and engagement of patients, parents, citizens and hospital, community, and primary and public health professionals. It facilitates collaborative working between paediatric consultants and GPs to deliver comprehensive care for children in their local communities.

Read more about the integrated care for children here.
https://www.economicsbydesign.com/integrated-healthcare-for-children-the-child-health-hub/