Since 2015, health care policy in England has shifted away from a focus on competition, as a way to drive performance towards more collaborative and integrated ways of working. Integrated Care Systems are at the forefront of this shift, intended to ensure better collaboration between NHS organisations and other NHS partners such as Local Authorities, and the voluntary sector. This research investigates how governance, accountability and decision-making arrangements are developing to support the achievement of system goals.

Before the election, the Labour Party in the UK promoted neighbourhood health centres, based on a system being introduced in Australia. These centres offer walk-in services seven days a week for urgent but not major emergencies. Stephen looks back at health policy over the decades, to see what we can learn from the past. 

The GP Worklife Survey is back today for its 12th edition. If you are a GP, please check your inbox over the coming weeks in case you are one of the GPs selected at random to take part, and ask your colleagues to do the same.

From Dr Donna Bramwell, Professor Kath Checkland, Professor Lindsay Forbes, Dr Sarah Partridge, Professor Stephen Peckham, and Dr Sharon Spooner. We reviewed the international published literature on processes and outcomes of financial incentivisation of QI activity in primary care.

This report summarises the Phase 2 findings of a short, qualitative study commissioned by the DHSC and delivered through PruComm on behalf of the DWP and DHSC Joint Work and Health Directorate to explore: What are the user needs of GPs from publicly available work and health services for workers (employees and the self-employed)?

Sanderson M, Allen P, Osipovic D, et al. (2023) BMJ Open 2023;13:e065993.

This book provides a historical account of the ways in which community nursing services have been shaped by policy changes; offers an important
assessment of how community nursing has evolved under successive governments; and considers how lessons learnt from the past can inform the organisation of current community nursing services.

Sharvari Patwardhan, Matthew Sutton, Marcello Morciano. Age and Ageing, Volume 51, Issue 12, December 2022, afac222.

This review covers the work of the Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Systems and Commissioning during 2021 and 2022 – the research outlined here builds on our work from the past three years.

Bramwell D, Hotham S, Peckham S, et al (2022). BMJ Open Quality 2022;11:e001960.

This final report sets out findings of our study of the development of Integrated Care Systems.

From Bolanle Odebiyi, Ben Walker, Jon Gibson, Matt Sutton, Sharon Spooner and Kath Checkland.

This is the final report of the National Evaluation of the Vanguard New Care Models Programme. Whilst assessments of some local Vanguards have been published, this report represents the only comprehensive assessment of the programme as a whole.

In this final phase of our national evaluation of the overall Vanguard programme we explored the scaling up and spreading of the ECH model, using a framework developed by Nolte (2018) to understand the factor supporting or inhibiting the process.