Identifying alternatives to old age psychiatry inpatient admission

"The results suggest that if enhanced community services were available, a significant minority of inpatients could be more appropriately supported in their own homes at a cost considerably lower than that currently incurred."

Identifying alternatives to old age psychiatry inpatient admission: an application of the balance of care approach to health and social care planning

S Tucker, C Brand, M Wilberforce, M Abendstern, D Challis
BMC Health Services Research 2015, 15:267  doi:10.1186/s12913-015-0913-1

Read more here.

Guidance on priority setting in health care

"This Guidance for Priority Setting in Health Care (GPS-Health), initiated by the World Health Organization, offers a comprehensive map of equity criteria that are relevant to healthcare priority setting and should be considered in addition to cost-effectiveness analysis."

Guidance on priority setting in health care (GPS-Health): the inclusion of equity criteria not captured by cost-effectiveness analysis
OF Norheim et al.
Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation 2014, 12:18

Read more here.

Priority setting - NHS Right Care reading list

"Priority-setting is by no means clear-cut, in part because it involves values as well as evidence. People who are responsible for resources, whether those resources be financial or time related, have to make priority decisions. They either have to allocate new resources or reallocate existing resources."

Right Care essential reading: priority-setting/prioritisation
N Pearce-Smith, M Gray
NHS Right Care
May 2014

Access the reading list here.

Socio-technical allocation of resources

"This Casebook describes a new approach to priority setting called Star (Socio-technical allocation of resources). The approach combines value for money analysis with stakeholder engagement. This allows those planning services to determine how resources can be most effectively invested, while the engagement of stakeholders means the decisions are understood and supported by those most affected." 

STAR – Socio-technical allocation of resources: engaging stakeholders in decisions 
M Airoldi
London School of Economics
March 2014

Read more here. You can access the accompanying case study here.

Best BMJ Quality & Safety articles 2013

"This special collection reflects the depth and breadth of content from BMJ Quality & Safety, which encourages innovation and creative thinking to improve the quality of health care and the science of improvement."

Articles included in the collection are:

• Identification of doctors at risk of recurrent complaints: a national study of healthcare complaints in Australia
• The global burden of unsafe medical care: analytic modelling of observational studies
• Systematic review of the application of the plan–do–study–act method to improve quality in healthcare
• Assessing adverse events among home care clients in three Canadian provinces using chart review
• 'Care left undone’ during nursing shifts: associations with workload and perceived quality of care
• Allocating scarce resources in real-time to reduce heart failure admissions: a prospective, controlled study
• Culture and behaviour in the English National Health Service: overview of lessons from a large
  multimethod study

BMJ Quality & Safety: A collection of key articles
The Health foundation

April 2014

Read more here.

Everyone counts: planning for patients 2014/15 to 2018/19

"Last year’s guidance identified stronger commissioning as a key theme for driving change. This section has set out those things which local commissioners need to include in their plans which will deliver the change they want to see."

Everyone counts: planning for patients 2014/15 to 2018/19
NHS England
December 2013

Read more here.

Close to home recommendations review

"A major concern is that the low rates paid under some local authority contracts could make it difficult for providers to meet the assessed needs of older people in ways that protect their human rights."

Close to home recommendations review
Equality and Human Rights Commission
October 2013

Read more here.

Association between chronic disease related hospitalisations and primary health care resourcing

"Measuring hospitalisations, that could potentially be avoided with high quality and accessible primary care, is one indicator of how well primary care services are performing."

A systematic review of evidence on the association between hospitalisation for chronic disease related ambulatory care sensitive conditions and primary health care resourcing
OR Gibson, L Segal, RA McDermott
BMC Health Services Research, 2013, 13:336

Read more here.

Allocating scarce resources to reduce heart failure readmissions

"An electronic medical record-enabled strategy that targeted scarce care transition resources to high-risk HF patients significantly reduced the risk-adjusted odds of readmission."

Allocating scarce resources in real-time to reduce heart failure readmissions: a prospective, controlled study
R Amarasingham, PC Patel, K Toto, LL Nelson, TS Swanson, BJ Moore, B Xie, S Zhang, KS Alvarez, Y Ma, MH Drazner, U Kollipara, EA Halm,
BMJ Quality and Safety Online First, published on 31 July 2013

Read more here.

Addressing the 'postcode lottery' in local resource allocation decisions

"This paper reports on how the National Prescribing Centre competency framework was developed, and presents a potentially transferable methodology for advancing a competency framework to support individual and organisational learning and improvement."

Addressing the 'postcode lottery' in local resource allocation decisions: a framework for clinical commissioning groups
J Russell, T Greenhalgh, H Lewis, I MacKenzie, N Maskrey, J Montgomery, C O'Donnell
Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2013, 106(4):120-123

Read more here.

Improving the allocation of health resources in England

"We review how health resource allocation in England and the formula on which it is based have changed over time, with a detailed critique of how decisions are currently made and how the process will change from April."

Improving the allocation of health resources in England: how to decide who gets what
D Buck, A Dixon
The King's Fund
April 2013

Read more here.

Looking for value in hard times

"This report describes how NHS Sheffield used a new approach, called Star (‘socio-technical allocation of resources’), to re-allocate resources within its eating disorder services."

Looking for value in hard times
The Health Foundation
August 2012

Read more here.

Literature review of decision criteria for resource allocation and healthcare decisionmaking

"This study highlights the importance of considering both normative and feasibility criteria for fair allocation of resources and optimized decisionmaking for coverage and use of healthcare interventions."

From efficacy to equity: literature review of decision criteria for resource allocation and healthcare decisionmaking
LA Guindo, M Wagner, R Baltussen, D Rindress, J van Til, P Kind, MM Goetghebeur
Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation, 2012, 10:9

Read more here.

Paying for "end-of-life" drugs in Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom

"This issue brief compares U.K., Australian, and German policies on coverage of end-of-life medicines, particularly those that are not curative and offer modest increments in median survival rates."

Paying for "end-of-life" drugs in Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom: balancing policy, pragmatism, and societal values
Issues in International Health Policy
The Commonwealth Fund
January 2012

Read more here.

Person-based resource allocation

This research summary describes what lies behind the Department of Health's new approach to setting target allocations for hospital care to commissioning general practices.

Person-based resource allocation: new approaches to estimating commissioning budgets for GP practices
M Bardsley, J Dixon
December 2011

Read more here.