The Wolfson Prize: designing the hospital of the future.

Background: The 2021 Wolfson Economics Prize asked how new hospitals should be designed to radically improve patient experiences, clinical outcomes, staff wellbeing and integration with wider health and social care. With a major programme to rebuild and renew hospitals in England underway, the Prize offered an opportunity to understand current thinking about hospitals and their future place. Methods: The 41 submissions that were identified as 'most promising' were reviewed and subjected to framework analysis. Emerging themes were identified and discussed iteratively. Results: Five dominant themes were identified: a calming environment; systems of care; distribution of services; use of technology; and going green. Several tensions and trade-offs were evident across the submissions and a number of gaps were identified in the knowledge base that need to be remedied to ensure that new hospitals are safe and efficient. Conclusion: The previous approach to building new hospitals, with its over-riding drive to reduce costs, has not served the UK well. New ways of thinking about hospital building and design are urgently needed, especially the funding of research and the creation of a national repository devoted to design solutions and post-build evaluations of new hospitals.

What next for the polyclinic? New models of primary health care are required in many former Soviet Union countries.

BACKGROUND: There is unfinished reform in primary care in Russia and other former Soviet Union (FSU) countries. The traditional 'Semashko' multi-specialty polyclinic model has been retained, while its major characteristics are increasingly questioned. The search for a new model is on a health policy agenda. It is relevant for many other countries. OBJECTIVES: In this paper, we explore the strengths and weaknesses of the multi-specialty polyclinic model currently found in Russia and other FSU countries, as well as the features of the emerging multi-disciplinary and large-scale primary care models internationally. The comparison of the two is a major research question. Health policy implications are discussed. METHODS: We use data from two physicians' surveys and recent literature to identify the characteristics of multi-specialty polyclinics, indicators of their performance and the evaluation in the specific country context. The review of the literature is used to describe new primary care models internationally. RESULTS: The Semashko polyclinic model has lost some of its original strengths due to the excessive specialization of service delivery. We demonstrate the strengths of extended practices in Western countries and conclude that FSU countries should "leapfrog" the phase of developing solo practices and build a multi-disciplinary model similar to the extended practices model in Europe. The latter may act as a 'golden mean' between the administrative dominance of the polyclinic model and the limited capacity of solo practices. The new model requires a separation of primary care and outpatient specialty care, with the transformation of polyclinics into centers of outpatient diagnostic and specialty services that become part of hospital services while working closely with primary care. CONCLUSION: The comprehensiveness of care in a big setting and potential economies of scale, which are major strengths of the polyclinic model, should be retained in the provision of specialty care rather than primary care. Internationally, there are lessons about the risks associated with models based on narrow specialization in caring for patients who increasingly have multiple conditions.

United Kingdom: Health System Review.

This analysis provides a review of developments in financing, governance, organisation and delivery, health reforms and performance of the health systems in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has enjoyed a national health service with access based on clinical need, and not ability to pay for over 70 years. This has provided several important benefits including protection against the financial consequences of ill-health, redistribution of wealth from rich to poor, and relatively low administrative costs. Despite this, the United Kingdom continues to lag behind many other comparable high-income countries in key measures including life expectancy, infant mortality and cancer survival. Total health spending in the United Kingdom is slightly above the average for Europe, but it is below many other comparable high-income countries such as Germany, France and Canada. The United Kingdom also has relatively lower levels of doctors, nurses, hospital beds and equipment than many other comparable high-income countries. Wider social determinants of health also contribute to poor outcomes, and the United Kingdom has one of the highest levels of income inequality in Europe. Devolution of responsibility for health care services since the late 1990s to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has resulted in divergence in policies between countries, including in prescription charges, and eligibility for publicly funded social care services. However, more commonalities than differences remain between these health care systems. The United Kingdom initially experienced one of the highest death rates associated with COVID-19; however, the success and speed of the United Kingdom's vaccination programme has since improved the United Kingdom's performance in this respect. Principal health reforms in each country are focusing on facilitating cross-sectoral partnerships and promoting integration of services in a manner that improves the health and well-being of local populations. These include the establishment of integrated care systems in England, integrated joint boards in Scotland, regional partnership boards in Wales and integrated partnership boards in Northern Ireland. Policies are also being developed to align the social care funding model closer to the National Health Service funding model. These include a cap on costs over an individual's lifetime in England, and a national care service free at the point of need in Scotland and Wales. Currently, and for the future, significant investment is needed to address major challenges including a growing backlog of elective care, and staffing shortfalls exacerbated by Brexit.

Transformations in the landscape of primary health care during COVID-19: Themes from the European region.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically impacted primary health care (PHC) across Europe. Since March 2020, the COVID-19 Health System Response Monitor (HSRM) has documented country-level responses using a structured template distributed to country experts. We extracted all PHC-relevant data from the HSRM and iteratively developed an analysis framework examining the models of PHC delivery employed by PHC providers in response to the pandemic, as well as the government enablers supporting these models. Despite the heterogenous PHC structures and capacities across European countries, we identified three prevalent models of PHC delivery employed: (1) multi-disciplinary primary care teams coordinating with public health to deliver the emergency response and essential services; (2) PHC providers defining and identifying vulnerable populations for medical and social outreach; and (3) PHC providers employing digital solutions for remote triage, consultation, monitoring and prescriptions to avoid unnecessary contact. These were supported by government enablers such as increasing workforce numbers, managing demand through public-facing risk communications, and prioritising pandemic response efforts linked to vulnerable populations and digital solutions. We discuss the importance of PHC systems maintaining and building on these models of PHC delivery to strengthen preparedness for future outbreaks and better respond to the contemporary health challenges.

United Kingdom: health system review

This analysis provides a review of developments in financing, governance, organisation and delivery, health reforms and performance of the health systems in the United Kingdom.

United Kingdom: health system summary

This Health System Summary is based on the United Kingdom: Health System Review (HiT) published in 2022. Health System Summaries use a concise format to communicate central features of country health systems and analyze available evidence on the organization, financing and delivery of health care. They also provide insights into key reforms and the varied challenges testing the performance of the health system.

The problems of smaller, rural and remote hospitals: Separating facts from fiction.

Smaller hospitals internationally are under threat. The narratives around the closure of smaller hospitals, regardless of size and location, are all constructed around three common problems - cost, quality and workforce. The literature is reviewed, demonstrating that there is little hard evidence to support the contention that hospital merger/closure solves these problems. The disbenefits of mergers and closures, including loss of resources, increased pressure on neighbouring organisations, shifting risk from the healthcare system to patients and their families, and the threat hospital closure represents to communities, are explored. Alternative structures, policies and funding mechanisms, based on the evidence, are urgently needed to support smaller hospitals in the UK and elsewhere.

Re-thinking barriers to organizational change in public hospitals.

Public hospitals are well known to be difficult to reform. This paper provides a comprehensive six-part analytic framework that can help policymakers and managers better shape their organizational and institutional behavior. The paper first describes three separate structural characteristics which, together, inhibit effective problem description and policy design for public hospitals. These three structural constraints are i) the dysfunctional characteristics found in most organizations, ii) the particular dysfunctions of professional health sector organizations, and iii) the additional dysfunctional dimensions of politically managed organizations. While the problems in each of these three dimensions of public hospital organization are well-known, and the first two dimensions clearly affect private as well as publicly run hospitals, insufficient attention has been paid to the combined impact of all three factors in making public hospitals particularly difficult to manage and steer. Further, these three structural dimensions interact in an institutional environment defined by three restrictive context limitations, again two of which also affect private hospitals but all three of which compound the management dilemmas in public hospitals. The first contextual limitation is the inherent complexity of delivering high quality, safe, and affordable modern inpatient care in a hospital setting. The second contextual limitation is a set of specific market failures in public hospitals, which limit the scope of the standard financial incentives and reform measures. The third and last contextual limitation is the unique problem of generalized and localized anxiety, which accompanies the delivery of medical services, and which suffuses decision-making on the part of patients, medical staff, hospital management, and political actors alike. This combination of six institutional characteristics - three structural dimensions and three contextual dimensions - can help explain why public hospitals are different in character from other parts of the public sector, and the scale of the challenge they present to political decision-makers.