Do the incentive payments in the new NHS contract for primary care reflect likely population health gains?

The new contract for primary care in the UK offers fee-for-service payments for a wide range of activities in a quality outcomes framework, with payments designed to reflect likely workload. This study aims to explore the link between these financial incentives and the likely population health gains. The study examines a subset of eight preventive interventions covering 38 of the 81 clinical indicators in the quality framework. The maximum payment for each service was calculated and compared with the likely population health gain in terms of lives saved per 100,000 population based on evidence from McColl et al. (1998). Maximum payments for the eight interventions examined make up 57% of the sum total maximum payment for all clinical interventions in the quality outcomes framework. There appears to be no relationship between pay and health gain across these eight interventions. Two of the eight interventions (warfarin in atrial fibrillation and statins in primary prevention) receive no incentive. Payments in the new contract do not reflect likely population health gain. There is a danger that clinical activity may be skewed towards high-workload activities that are only marginally effective, to the detriment of more cost effective activities. If improving population health is the primary goal of the NHS, then fee-for-service incentives should be designed to reflect likely health gain rather than likely workload.health policy, incentive payments, primary care, quality, UK

Socio-economic inequality in small area use of elective total hip replacement in the English NHS in 1991 and 2001

International evidence suggests that there are substantial socio-economic inequalities in the delivery of specialist health services, even in the UK and other high-income countries with publicly funded health systems (Goddard and Smith 2001, Dixon et al. 2003, Van Doorslaer, Koolman and Jones 2004, Van Doorslaer et al. 2000). Studies of total hip replacement in the English NHS have yielded particularly striking examples, given that hip replacement is such a common, effective and longestablished health technology. Administrative data show that people living in deprived areas are less likely to receive hip replacement (Chaturvedi and Ben-Shlomo 1995, Dixon et al. 2004) while survey data suggest they may be more likely to need it (Milner et al. 2004). However, previous studies have not examined change in inequality over time. This paper presents evidence on the change in socio-economic inequality in small area use of elective total hip replacement in the English NHS, comparing 1991 with 2001. This was a period of important large-scale health care reform in England, involving at least two significant reforms that might potentially have influenced socio-economic inequality in health care delivery: (1) the introduction and subsequent abolition of the Conservative “internal market” 1991-7, and (2) the introduction in 1995 of a revised NHS resource allocation formula designed to reduce geographical inequalities in health care delivery. Two datasets, for 1991 and 2001, were assembled from routine NHS data sources: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) on hospital utilisation in England and the corresponding decennial National Censuses in 1991 and 2001. Both datasets contain information on over 8,000 electoral wards in England (over 95% of the total). To improve comparability, a common geography of frozen 1991 wards was adopted. The Townsend deprivation score was employed as an indicator of socio-economic status. Inequality was analysed in two ways. First, for comparability with previous small area studies of hip replacement, by using simple range measures based on indirectly age-sex standardised utilisation ratios (SURs) by deprivation quintile groups. Second, using concentration indices of deprivationrelated inequality in use based on indirectly age-sex standardised utilisation ratios for each individual small area. Each SUR is the observed use divided by the expected use, if each age and sex group in the study population had the same rates of use as the national population.

Does hospital competition harm equity? Evidence from the English National Health Service

Increasing evidence shows that hospital competition under fixed prices can improve quality and reduce cost. Concerns remain, however, that competition may undermine socio-economic equity in the utilisation of care. We test this hypothesis in the context of the pro-competition reforms of the English National Health Service progressively introduced from 2004 to 2006. We use a panel of 32,482 English small areas followed from 2003 to 2008 and a difference in differences approach. The effect of competition on equity is identified by the interaction between market structure, small area income deprivation and year. We find a negative association between market dispersion and elective admissions in deprived areas. The effect of pro-competition reform was to reduce this negative association slightly, suggesting that competition did not undermine equity.

Measuring change in health care equity using small area administrative data – evidence from the English NHS 2001-8

This study developed a method for measuring change in socio-economic equity in health care utilisation using small area level administrative data. Our method provides more detailed information on utilisation than survey data but only examines socio-economic differences between neighbourhoods rather than individuals. The context was the English NHS from 2001 to 2008, a period of accelerated expenditure growth and pro-competition reform. Hospital records for all adults receiving non-emergency hospital care in the English NHS from 2001 to 2008 were aggregated to 32,482 English small areas with mean population about 1,500 and combined with other small area administrative data. Regression models of utilisation were used to examine year-on-year change in the small area association between deprivation and utilisation, allowing for population size, age-sex composition and disease prevalence including (from 2003-8) cancer, chronic kidney disease, coronary heart disease, diabetes, epilepsy, hypertension, hypothyroidism, stroke, transient ischaemic attack and (from 2006-8) atrial fibrillation, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, obesity and heart failure. There was no substantial change in small area associations between deprivation and utilisation for outpatient visits, hip replacement, senile cataract, gastroscopy or coronary revascularisation, though overall non-emergency inpatient admissions rose slightly faster in more deprived areas than elsewhere. Associations between deprivation and disease prevalence changed little during the period, indicating that observed need did not grow faster in more deprived areas than elsewhere. We conclude that there was no substantial deterioration in socio-economic equity in health care utilisation in the English NHS from 2001 to 2008, and if anything, there may have been a slight improvement.

Comparing healthcare quality:a common framework for both ordinal and cardinal data with an application to primary care variation in England

The paper proposes a framework for comparing the quality of healthcare providers and assessing the variation in quality between them, which is directly applicable to both ordinal and cardinal quality data on a comparable basis. The resultant measures are sensitive to the full distribution of quality scores for each provider, not just the mean or the proportion meeting some binary quality threshold, thereby making full use of the multicategory response data increasingly available from patient experience surveys. The measures can also be standardized for factors such as age, sex, ethnicity, health and deprivation using a distribution regression model. We illustrate by measuring the quality of primary care services in England in 2019 using three different sources of publicly available, general practice-level information: multicategory response patient experience data, ordinal inspection ratings and cardinal clinical achievement scores. We find considerable variation at both local and regional levels using all three data sources. However, the correlation between the comparative quality indices calculated using the alternative data sources is weak, suggesting that they capture different aspects of general practice quality

TRANSVERSE SUSCEPTIBILITY STUDIES OF RECORDING MEDIA

A highly sensitive transverse susceptometer has been developed for the investigation of magnetic recording media. The susceptometer was based on the design of Pareti and Turilli[4] with modifications to the solenoid and sensing coils. The modifications have resulted in an improvement in the signal to baseline ratio of a factor of 525, and a reduction in random noise. The increase in the sensitivity of the susceptometer allowed the investigation of Advanced Metal Particle (AMP) tapes and the measurement of the imaginary component of the transverse susceptibility (TS) proposed by Papusoi[5]. Also, a modification was developed which allowed the investigation of the non-linear TS, proposed by Chantrell et al[7]. The work reported for the latter two techniques was the first experimental demonstration of these measurements on magnetic recording media. Samples of Co-y-Fe203, Cr02, mixed y-Fe203 / Cr02 and AMP tapes were investigated, as were y- Fe201, Cr0 2 and AMP powders. The investigations suggested that the incoherent reversal mode was dominant in the systems containing Cr02, with coherent reversal dominant in the remaining systems. The anisotropy peaks measured using the non-linear IS were found to be less dependent on sample texture than those of the traditional linear measurement. In particular the anisotropy peaks of the non-linear TS for incoherently reversing systems appeared to be independent of texture and it was proposed that these were a direct measure of the anisotropy field distribution, although independent verification was not performed. The determination of magnetic coating thickness after Sollis and Bissell[6] was extended to allow the measurement of AMP tapes. A computer model was developed to investigate the error in the technique due to the particulate nature of the coating. The results of the model indicated that the error increased as coating thickness and volume packing fraction decreased. Correction factors were determined for MP3 and MP4 particle based systems. The detection of the imaginary component of TS and its close agreement with the theoretical predictions of Papusoi suggested that the dassification of TS as a 'stiffness' method of anisotropy field determination might be in error

Equity in HTA : what doesn’t get measured, gets marginalised

When making recommendations about the public funding of new health technologies, policy makers typically pay close attention to quantitative evidence about the comparative effectiveness, cost effectiveness and budget impact of those technologies – what we might call “efficiency” criteria. Less attention is paid, however, to quantitative evidence about who gains and who loses from these public expenditure decisions, and whether those who gain are better or worse off than the rest of the population in terms of their health – what we might call “equity” criteria. Two studies recently published in this journal by Shmueli and colleagues suggest that this efficiency-oriented imbalance in the use of quantitative evidence may have unfortunate consequences – as the old adage goes: “what gets measured, gets done”. The first study, by Shmueli, Golan, Paolucci and Mentzakis, found that health policy makers in Israel think equity considerations are just as important as efficiency considerations – at least when it comes to making hypothetical technology funding decisions in a survey. By contrast, the second study – by Shmueli alone – found that efficiency rules the roost when it comes to making real decisions about health technology funding in Israel. Both studies have limitations and potential biases, and more research is needed using qualitative methods and more nuanced survey designs to determine precisely which kinds of equity consideration decision makers think are most important and why these considerations do not appear to be given much weight in decision making. However, the basic overall finding from the two studies seems plausible and important. It suggests that health technology funding bodies need to pay closer attention to equity considerations, and to start making equity a quantitative endpoint of health technology assessment using the methods of equity-informative economic evaluation that are now available