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Devolution and decentralisation policies involving health and other government sectors have been promoted with a view to improve efficiency and equity in local service provision. Evaluations of these reforms have focused on specific health or care measures, but little is known about their full impact on local health systems. We evaluated the impact of devolution in Greater Manchester (England) on multiple outcomes using a whole system approach. We estimated the impact of devolution until February 2020 on 98 measures of health system performance, using the generalised synthetic control method and adjusting for multiple hypothesis testing. We selected measures from existing monitoring frameworks to populate the WHO Health System Performance Assessment framework. The included measures captured information on health system functions, intermediatory objectives, final goals, and social determinants of health. We identified which indicators were targeted in response to devolution from an analysis of 170 health policy intervention documents. Life expectancy (0.233 years, S.E. 0.012) and healthy life expectancy (0.603 years, S.E. 0.391) increased more in GM than in the estimated synthetic control group following devolution. These increases were driven by improvements in public health, primary care, hospital, and adult social care services as well as factors associated with social determinants of health, including a reduction in alcohol-related admissions (-110.1 admission per 100,000, S.E. 9.07). In contrast, the impact on outpatient, mental health, maternity, and dental services was mixed. Devolution was associated with improved population health, driven by improvements in health services and wider social determinants of health. These changes occurred despite limited devolved powers over health service resources suggesting that other mechanisms played an important role, including the allocation of sustainability and transformation funding and the alignment of decision-makin

Risk-adjustment models are used to predict the cost of care for patients based on their observable characteristics, and to derive efficient and equitable budgets based on weighted capitation. Markers based on past care contacts can improve model fit, but their coefficients may be affected by provider variations in diagnostic, treatment and reporting quality. This is problematic when distinguishing need and supply influences on costs is required.We examine the extent of this bias in the national formula for mental health care using administrative records for 43.7 million adults registered with 7746 GP practices in England in 2015. We also illustrate a method to control for provider effects.A linear regression containing a rich set of individual, GP practice and area characteristics, and fixed effects for local health organisations, had goodness-of-fit equal to R2 = 0.007 at person level and R2 = 0.720 at GP practice level. The addition of past care markers changed substantially the coefficients on the other variables and increased the goodness-of-fit to R2 = 0.275 at person level and R2 = 0.815 at GP practice level. The further inclusion of provider effects affected the coefficients on GP practice and area variables and on local health organisation fixed effects, increasing goodness-of-fit at GP practice level to R2 = 0.848.With adequate supply controls, it is possible to estimate coefficients on past care markers that are stable and unbiased. Nonetheless, inconsistent reporting may affect need predictions and penalise populations served by underreporting providers.

Background: Oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinomas (OSCC and OPSCC) represent the majority of head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC). Human papillomavirus (HPV) is an important etiologic factor together with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). Little is known on the prevalence of major herpesviruses [EBV, cytomegalovirus (CMV) and HHV-6, - 7 and - 8] in HNSCCs. Methods: Fifty-one formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue samples taken at surgery (40 oropharyngeal, 11 oral) were analyzed for 40 HPV genotypes (20 high-risk types), EBV, CMV, HHV-6, - 7 and - 8 by quantitative PCR. Expression of the HPV-induced p16INK4A protein was also investigated by immunohistochemistry (IHC). Results: In SCC, the prevalence of EBV was significantly higher compared to that of HPV (EBV 51% vs. HPV 19.5%; P = 0.005). HPV infection was found in 25% of OPSCC and in none of the OSCC; conversely, higher prevalence of EBV was found in OSCC (72.7%). HPV and EBV co-infection was detected only in 4 (10%) OPSCC. CMV was detected in only two cases, whereas HHV-6, - 7 and - 8 resulted negative. The prevalence of HPV but no EBV was associated with the non-keratinizing SCC type (NKSCC) compared to the keratinizing SCC type (KSCC)(HPV-DNA P < 0.005; EBV = 0.054). Conclusions: Single HPV or EBV positivity was higher in OSCC than in OPSCC. Other potentially oncogenic herpesvirus types were minimally or not represented.

Pay-for-performance (P4P) is the provision of financial incentives to healthcare providers based on pre-specified performance targets. P4P has been used as a policy tool to improve healthcare provision globally. However, researchers tend to cluster into those working on high or low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), with still limited knowledge exchange, potentially constraining opportunities for learning from across income settings. We reflect here on some commonalities and differences in the design of P4P schemes, research questions, methods and data across income settings. We highlight how a global perspective on knowledge synthesis could lead to innovations and further knowledge advancement.

INTRODUCTION: The Short Form Survey 12-item (SF12) mental and physical health version has been applied in several studies on populations from Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the SF12 has not been computed and validated for these populations. We address in this paper these gaps in the literature and use a health intervention example in Malawi to show the importance of our analysis for health policy. METHODS: We firstly compute the weights of the SF12 physical and mental health measure for the Malawian population using principal component analysis on a sample of 2838 adults from wave four (2006) of Malawian Longitudinal Study of Aging (MLSFH). We secondly test the construct validity of our computed and the US-population weighted SF12 measures using regression analysis and Fixed Effect estimation on waves four, seven (2012) and eight (2013) of the MLSFH. Finally, we use a Malawian cash transfer programme to exemplify the implications of using US- and Malawi-weighted SF12 mental health measures in policy evaluation. RESULTS: We find that the Malawian SF12 health measure weighted by our computed Malawian population weights is strongly associated with other mental health measures (Depression:-0.501, p = < 0.001; Anxiety:-1.755; p = < 0.001) and shows better construct validity in comparison to the US-weighted SF12 mental health component (rs = 0.675 versus rs = 0.495). None of the SF12 measures shows strong associations with other measures of physical health. The estimated average effect of the cash transfer is significant when using the Malawi-weighted SF12 mental health measure (treatment effect: 1.124; p = < 0.1), but not when using the US-weighted counterpart (treatment effect: 1.129; p > 0.1). The weightings affect the size of the impacts across mental health quantiles suggesting that the weighting scheme matters for empirical health policy analysis. CONCLUSION: Mental health shows more pronounced associations with the physical health dimension in a Low-Income Country li

BACKGROUND: Research is fundamental to high-quality care, but concerns have been raised about whether health research is conducted in the populations most affected by high disease prevalence. Geographical distribution of research activity is important for many reasons. Recruitment is a major barrier to research delivery, and undertaking recruitment in areas of high prevalence could be more efficient. Regional variability exists in risk factors and outcomes, so research done in healthier populations may not generalise. Much applied health research evaluates interventions, and their impact may vary by context (including geography). Finally, fairness dictates that publically funded research should be accessible to all, so that benefits of participating can be fairly distributed. We explored whether recruitment of patients to health research is aligned with disease prevalence in England. METHODS: We measured disease prevalence using the Quality and Outcomes Framework in England (total long-term conditions, mental health and diabetes). We measured research activity using data from the NIHR Clinical Research Network. We presented descriptive data on geographical variation in recruitment rates. We explored associations between the recruitment rate and disease prevalence rate. We calculated the share of patient recruitment that would need to be redistributed to align recruitment with prevalence. We assessed whether associations between recruitment rate and disease prevalence varied between conditions, and over time. RESULTS: There was significant geographical variation in recruitment rates. When areas were ranked by disease prevalence, recruitment was not aligned with prevalence, with disproportionately low recruitment in areas with higher prevalence of total long-term and mental health conditions. At the level of 15 local networks, analyses suggested that around 12% of current recruitment activity would need to be redistributed to align with disease prevalence. Overall, al

BACKGROUND: Equitable access to mental healthcare is a priority for many countries. The National Health Service in England uses a weighted capitation formula to ensure that the geographical distribution of resources reflects need.AimsTo produce a revised formula for estimating local need for secondary mental health, learning disability (intellectual disability) and psychological therapies services for adults in England. METHOD: We used demographic records for 43 751 535 adults registered with a primary care practitioner in England linked with service use, ethnicity, physical health diagnoses and type of household, from multiple data-sets. Using linear regression, we estimated the individual cost of care in 2015 as a function of individual- and area-level need and supply variables in 2013 and 2014. We sterilised the effects of the supply variables to obtain individual-need estimates. We aggregated these by general practitioner practice, age and gender to derive weights for the national capitation formula. RESULTS: Higher costs were associated with: being 30-50 years old, compared with 20-24; being Irish, Black African, Black Caribbean or of mixed ethnicity, compared with White British; having been admitted for specific physical health conditions, including drug poisoning; living alone, in a care home or in a communal environment; and living in areas with a higher percentage of out-of-work benefit recipients and higher prevalence of severe mental illness. Longer distance from a provider was associated with lower cost. CONCLUSIONS: The resulting needs weights were higher in more deprived areas and informed the distribution of some 12% (£9 bn in 2019/20) of the health budget allocated to local organisations for 2019/20 to 2023/24.Declaration of interestNone.

BACKGROUND: Mental health and poverty are strongly interlinked. There is a gap in the literature on the effects of poverty alleviation programmes on mental health. We aim to fill this gap by studying the effect of an exogenous income shock generated by the Child Support Grant, South Africa's largest Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) programme, on mental health. METHODS: We use biennial data on 10,925 individuals from the National Income Dynamics Study between 2008 and 2014. We exploit the programme's eligibility criteria to estimate instrumental variable Fixed Effects models. RESULTS: We find that receiving the Child Support Grant improves adult mental health by 0.822 points (on a 0-30 scale), 4.1% of the sample mean. CONCLUSION: Our findings show that UCT programmes have strong mental health benefits for the poor adult population.

Poor mental health is a pressing global health problem, with high prevalence among poor populations from low-income countries. Existing studies of conditional cash transfer (CCT) effects on mental health have found positive effects. However, there is a gap in the literature on population-wide effects of cash transfers on mental health and if and how these vary by the severity of mental illness. We use the Malawian Longitudinal Study of Family and Health containing 790 adult participants in the Malawi Incentive Programme, a year-long randomized controlled trial. We estimate average and distributional quantile treatment effects and we examine how these effects vary by gender, HIV status and usage of the cash transfer. We find that the cash transfer improves mental health on average by 0.1 of a standard deviation. The effect varies strongly along the mental health distribution, with a positive effect for individuals with worst mental health of about four times the size of the average effect. These improvements in mental health are associated with increases in consumption expenditures and expenditures related to economic productivity. Our results show that CCTs can improve adult mental health for the poor living in low-income countries, particularly those with the worst mental health.

Crowding in emergency departments (EDs) is increasing in many health systems. Previous studies of the relationship between crowding and care quality are limited by the use of data from single hospitals, a focus on particular patient groups, a focus on a narrow set of quality measures, and use of crowding measures which induce bias from unobserved hospital and patient characteristics. Using data from 139 hospitals covering all major EDss in England, we measure crowding using quasi-exogenous variation in the volume of EDs attendances and examine its impacts on indicators of performance across the entire EDs care pathway. We exploit variations from expected volume estimated using high-dimensional fixed effects capturing hospital-specific variation in attendances by combinations of month and hour-of-the-week. Unexpected increases in attendance volume result in substantially longer waiting times, lower quantity and complexity of care, more patients choosing to leave without treatment, changes in referral and discharge decisions, but only small increases in reattendances and no increase in mortality. Causal bounds under potential omitted variable bias are narrow and exclude zero for the majority of outcomes. Results suggest that physician and patient responses may largely mitigate the impacts of demand increases on patient outcomes in the short-run.

BACKGROUND: Studies finding higher mortality rates for patients admitted to hospital at weekends rely on routine administrative data to adjust for risk of death, but these data may not adequately capture severity of illness. We examined how rates of patient arrival at accident and emergency (A&E) departments by ambulance-a marker of illness severity-were associated with in-hospital mortality by day and time of attendance. METHODS: Retrospective observational study of 3 027 946 admissions to 140 non-specialist hospital trusts in England between April 2013 and February 2014. Patient admissions were linked with A&E records containing mode of arrival and date and time of attendance. We classified arrival times by day of the week and daytime (07:00 to 18:59) versus night (19:00 to 06:59 the following day). We examined the association with in-hospital mortality within 30 days using multivariate logistic regression. RESULTS: Over the week, 20.9% of daytime arrivals were in the highest risk quintile compared with 18.5% for night arrivals. Daytime arrivals on Sundays contained the highest proportion of patients in the highest risk quintile at 21.6%. Proportions of admitted patients brought in by ambulance were substantially higher at night and higher on Saturday (61.1%) and Sunday (60.1%) daytimes compared with other daytimes in the week (57.0%). Without adjusting for arrival by ambulance, risk-adjusted mortality for patients arriving at night was higher than for daytime attendances on Wednesday (0.16 percentage points). Compared with Wednesday daytime, risk-adjusted mortality was also higher on Thursday night (0.15 percentage points) and increased throughout the weekend from Saturday daytime (0.16 percentage points) to Sunday night (0.26 percentage points). After adjusting for arrival by ambulance, the raised mortality only reached statistical significance for patients arriving at A&E on Sunday daytime (0.17 percentage points). CONCLUSION: Using conventional risk-adjustment

Objective Patients admitted as emergencies to hospitals at the weekend have higher death rates than patients admitted on weekdays. This may be because the restricted service availability at weekends leads to selection of patients with greater average severity of illness. We examined volumes and rates of hospital admissions and deaths across the week for patients presenting to emergency services through two routes: (a) hospital Accident and Emergency departments, which are open throughout the week; and (b) services in the community, for which availability is more restricted at weekends. Method Retrospective observational study of all 140 non-specialist acute hospital Trusts in England analyzing 12,670,788 Accident and Emergency attendances and 4,656,586 emergency admissions (940,859 direct admissions from primary care and 3,715,727 admissions through Accident and Emergency) between April 2013 and February 2014.Emergency attendances and admissions to hospital and deaths in any hospital within 30 days of attendance or admission were compared for weekdays and weekends. Results Similar numbers of patients attended Accident and Emergency on weekends and weekdays. There were similar numbers of deaths amongst patients attending Accident and Emergency on weekend days compared with weekdays (378.0 vs. 388.3). Attending Accident and Emergency at the weekend was not associated with a significantly higher probability of death (risk-adjusted OR: 1.010). Proportionately fewer patients who attended Accident and Emergency at weekend were admitted to hospital (27.5% vs. 30.0%) and it is only amongst the subset of patients attending Accident and Emergency who were selected for admission to hospital that the probability of dying was significantly higher at the weekend (risk-adjusted OR: 1.054). The average volume of direct admissions from services in the community was 61% lower on weekend days compared to weekdays (1317 vs. 3404). There were fewer deaths following direct admission on w

The study stems from the relevance of the global economic crisis which is affecting companies to an increasing extent. The objective of the paper is to test the degree of effectiveness of the insolvency prediction models, most widely used in the literature.

Obiettivi: Con questo studio, si tenta di far emergere i motivi per cui le aziende familiari sono più stimolate a implementare processi di sostenibilità. Si vuole dimostrare, infatti, che le aziende familiari abbiano un approccio più sostenibile perché influenzate dal passaggio generazionale, bilanciando tradizione e innovazione. Metodologia: Metodo qualitativo, con analisi esplorativa, con il supporto di un case study; approccio più adatto per indagare un fenomeno complesso che evolve nel tempo. Per lo studio si sono utilizzati dati primari originati da interviste e questionari somministrati alla famiglia e ai dirigenti; dati secondari raccolti da diverse fonti. Risultati: Da questo studio emerge che la cura del territorio, l’attenzione verso i prodotti di qualità, la cura per la salute del consumatore sono influenzati dalla reputazione e dell’immagine dell’azienda. Tuttavia queste sono strettamente legate all’etica di famiglia che si tramanda da generazione a generazione. Ciò dimostra che le aziende familiari tengono alla loro reputazione e quindi sono più sostenibili, perché influenzate dal passaggio generazionale. Originalità: Gli studi sulla sostenibilità osservano le aziende nel loro complesso, al fine di estrapolare le buone pratiche, oppure per verificarne l’influenza sugli stakeholder. Dall’analisi della letteratura sul family business emerge un gap sui motivi che spingono le aziende familiari ad essere più sostenibili. Il nostro studio contribuisce al dibattito internazionale sul family business, con una prima analisi esplorativa, introducendo elementi che spiegano il legame tra reputazione, sostenibilità e successione

Background and objectives: Same-day surgery is common for foot surgery. Continuous regional anesthesia for outpatients has been shown effective but the economic impact on the perioperative process-related healthcare costs remains unclear. Methods: One hundred twenty consecutive patients were included in this assessor-blinded, prospective cohort study and allocated according to inclusion criteria in the day-care or in the in-patient group. Standardized continuous popliteal sciatic nerve block was performed in both groups for 48 h using an elastomeric pump delivering ropivacaine 0.2 % at a rate of 5 ml/h with an additional 5 ml bolus every 60 min. Outpatients were discharged the day of surgery and followed with standardized telephone interviews. The total direct health costs of both groups were compared. Moreover, the difference in treatment costs and the difference in terms of quality of care and effectiveness between the groups were compared. Results: Total management costs were significantly reduced in the day-care group. There was no difference between the groups regarding pain at rest and with motion, persistent pain after catheter removal and the incidence of PONV. Persistent motor block and catheter inflammation/infection were comparable in both groups. There was neither a difference in the number of unscheduled ambulatory visits nor in the number of readmissions. Conclusions: Day-care continuous regional analgesia leads to an overall positive impact on costs by decreasing the incidence of unplanned ambulatory visits and unscheduled readmissions, without compromising on the quality of analgesia, patients’ satisfaction, and safety.

Il D.Lgs. 139/2015 di attuazione della Direttiva 2013/34/UE riforma la redazione del bilancio di esercizio e modifica, tra l’altro, il regime di rilevazione contabile delle azioni proprie, non solo per quanto riguarda le scritture dell’esercizio 2016, ma anche per quelle dell’esercizio 2015. Il nuovo regime contabile, da applicare a partire dal 1° gennaio 2016,prevede l’iscrizione delle azioni proprie non più nell’attivo con costituzione di una riserva indisponibile (l’acquisto di azioni proprie comportava la costituzione di una riserva indisponibile per un importo corrispondente a quello delle azioni acquisite, da mantenere in bilancio finché le azioni non fossero state alienate o annullate) ma a diretta riduzione del patrimonio netto. Ciò implica l’iscrizione di una riserva con segno negativo. Con riferimento alle azioni proprie già in portafoglio al 31 dicembre 2015, il cambiamento del criterio di classificazione comporta la necessità di riclassificare le azioni acquisite in passato, girocontando i valori iscritti nell’attivo a riduzione del patrimonio netto attraverso l’iscrizione di una riserva con segno negativo.