In the midst of a blizzard of reports about the overuse of general practice it may seem inappropriate to highlight the problem of underuse, but many people are still presenting to general practice too late, or only presenting as an emergency. Most of us are aware of the challenges that an ageing population—or more specifically […]
Health services have become archipelagos. There are great islands like primary care and secondary care, acute and community, or public health and clinical practice, and each one is surrounded by deep water with the occasional ferryboat or swimmer going between them. Any tension between public health and clinical practice is artificial; a population perspective and a […]
Suddenly the word population is everywhere. The Oxford University Department of Public Health is now the Department of Population Health Sciences, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement has added population health to form its triple aim, the American Hospital Association talks about a second wave of hospitals with population health as their theme. Furthermore, Public Health […]
Read the rest of this series of blogs about designing and planning population based systems of care here. Step 8: Developing a system budget One of the aims of developing systems is for clinicians and patient representatives to be involved in the stewardship of resources. They can fight for more resources, but they also need […]
Read the rest of this series of blogs about designing and planning population based systems of care here. Step 7: Defining the pathway The pathway is the route the patient usually takes through the system. NICE produces pathways, but these need to be localised using the Map of Medicine or the Pathways for Health software. […]
Read the rest of this series of blogs about designing and planning population based systems of care here. Step 6: Creating a network The network is the set of individuals and organisations that delivers the system to the populations. At the start of the project it is also important to agree who the partners are […]
Read the rest of this series of blogs about designing and planning population based systems of care here. Step 5: Setting standards Having formulated objectives and chosen criteria to measure those objectives, the next stage in the development of a system is to set standards. (Standards can be set for process criteria even in the […]
Read the rest of this series of blogs about designing and planning population based systems of care here. Step 4: Choosing criteria Choosing criteria is a more time consuming process and may need to be addressed separately. For example it is important to reach an agreed definition by what is meant by “diagnose quickly” and […]
Read the rest of this series of blogs about designing and planning population based systems of care here. Step 3: Setting objectives Having defined the scope of the system and agreed the population to be served, the next step is to set objectives. […]
Read the rest of this series of blogs about designing and planning population based systems of care here. Step 2: Defining the Population Having defined the scope of the system, what is to be included and what is to be left out, the second step is to define the population to be covered and served […]