The Care Workforce Crisis
If you’re bucket is leaking don’t just poor water in faster – fix the leaks! We’ve been privileged recently to have been able to talk to a lot of people struggling to manage their local care system in the face of some of the highest levels of care staff vacancies ever experienced. In the thick […]
Lived Experience Changes Lives
“I know there’s lots of stuff I’m supposed to do, phone numbers I should ring and it’s all so confusing, I’m ill! Why don’t people realise how hard this is!?” – Jayne. Jayne was speaking to our Lived Experience Co-ordinator telling her what life was really like following her GP appointment. Halfway through the forty-minute […]
What does it take to improve system level demand and capacity planning?
Over the years, WSP have often worked to leave a legacy of capability in modelling skills with individuals, organisations and systems they have partnered with. The success of which has been as varied as the British weather. Lately, we’ve partnered with the Demand and Capacity team at NHSE/I in providing dedicated support for Norfolk and […]
Why were the modellers wrong (again)?
The recent MPs report about how we responded to COVID has generated some media interest in the nature of science and its relationship with policy. We have commented on the issues raised when we are ‘led by the science’ in a previous blog, but the recent discussion has focussed on the fact that being wrong […]
Elective Care
The physical and mental health effects of Covid, and Long-Covid, continue to consume significant healthcare capacity to treat urgent and acute phases of care. While this is critical to population health, this consumption of limited capacity has disrupted other, equally important planned care. Lower referral rates for long-term conditions caused by fewer patients accessing GPs […]
New Recruit
When I had my first interview with WSP back in October 2020, the lockdown restrictions were just easing, and I was able to meet a few of my potential future colleagues in the office. However, just a few weeks later, that had all changed. With rising Covid-19 cases and increasingly tough restrictions, we were all […]
Who Is Our COVID-19 Leader…?
Who is our COVID19 leader….? We have heard a lot about ‘being led by the science’ in the last few weeks, which I have assumed is a means of communicating to the great British public that there is certainty and a sure footing on which decisions are being made. To paraphrase, what we seem to […]
A technology-enabled health and care workforce for the future?
When will health and care services take full advantage of new technologies, or are we doomed – or perhaps blessed – to be always half a generation behind the rest of the world? Prompted by the Topol review WSP recently brought together a group of academics to help us think through the opportunities presented by […]
New approaches needed if the Long Term Plan isn’t to result in more of the same…
Most people won’t be surprised at the key messages in the Long Term Plan published on the 7th January, although there are admittedly some juicy bits to get your teeth stuck into like the commitments on prevention and health inequalities. But, have we heard a lot of it before? Are we indeed on verge of […]
All models are wrong ….
It was George Box, a statistician, who is accredited with the quote “all models are wrong, some are useful” – but it is a frequently quoted and well attested observation. Over my twenty-plus years of modelling, the balance between ‘wrong’ and ‘useful’ in any one model is a constant tension to hold, and to use […]