Appraisal of screening for depression

The Mid and South Essex stroke stewardship group wanted to better understand which of the interventions they delivered were high value and which were low value to inform decision-making on use of resources and investment. Arden & GEM’s Healthcare Solutions team provided training and support to enable the group to use the Socio-Technical Allocation of Resources (STAR) process in value based decision-making. As a result, the MSE stroke stewardship group has the insight needed to improve the allocation of their existing resources and improve outcomes for their patients. SPH were part of the project team, conducting a librarian review of economic evidence relating to cost-effectiveness of the stroke interventions to feed into the first workshop. This comprised a review of existing economic cost-effectiveness assessments (ideally by NICE as these are recognised as the guiding authority within the NHS). Where an economic assessment had not been undertaken then this was noted for further consideration. More detail here

SPH carried out a Health Needs Assessment for a local authority that was recommissioning its Healthy Child Programme (HCP). The purpose was to review whether existing provision and service configuration of the HCP was meeting the needs of children and young people in the county, and to identify gaps and potential options for improvement. This is a preventative programme which includes Health Visiting and School Nursing Services, Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) Programme and healthy start vouchers and vitamins, linking with childhood immunisation services, community paediatrics, speech and language, services for children with a learning disability and complex needs and child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), among others. The HNA was carried out jointly by SPH and the local authority, with the epidemiological needs assessment and service description provided by the local authority. The report was compiled using a range of publicly available and locally collected epidemiological and service use data. In addition, SPH carried out a consultation of key corporate stakeholders as well as children and young people, their parents and carers. This included semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in a range of organisations, a survey of a wider range of staff who work with children and young people and a survey of children and young people, their parents and cares which was distributed through the services.