News

Paying hospitals for activity provides no incentive to improve. Using historical data, patients awaiting cardiac surgery can be profiled, with hospitals paid extra to bear the risk of complications, but receiving no further payment if a second operation is required

Quality of life measures used to assess the value of medical treatments fail to capture what matters to patients and carers. A UK project to develop new metrics could lead to an overhaul of how cost-effectiveness is judged

A new report shows an overall improvement in the implementation of Health 2020 values and principles in the WHO European Region, with the number of countries that have policies addressing health inequalities and their social determinants increasing from 88 per cent to 98 percent between 2010 and 2016

An early death under age 75 is 20 per cent more likely in the north than the south of England according to research led by Manchester University, which shows there 14,333 more premature deaths in the north in 2015 and 1.2 million more early deaths in the north from 1965 to 2015

A new Human Pathology Atlas launched this month by researchers at Sweden’s national Science for Life Laboratory analyses all human genes in all major cancers, showing the consequence of their corresponding protein levels for overall patient survival

A study from Cleveland Clinic suggests long-term mortality trends may be better understood by focusing on life-years lost rather the solely looking at cause of death

A scheme launched in 2011 to help patients stick to their drug regimens has been so successful that in its first five years it saved the National Health Service in England £75.4 million, and will save £517.6m in the longer-term

Setting precedent in medical case, agency finds NHS trust didn’t adequately protect data on 1.6 million patients

By measuring and comparing patient outcomes, a hospital group in the Netherlands has cut down on unnecessary x-rays, reduced surgical complications and delivered better results for cancer patients. Payers have taken note