The Midlands Decision Support Network in association with The Strategy Unit are hosting INSIGHT 2022 our annual festival of learning and sharing events for the NHS, local government and other partners across health and care.

This year’s festival is from Monday 21^st November until Friday 2^nd December and includes a mixture of talks, workshops and panel discussions. The theme is ‘The science and craft of decision making’.

The rest of the content stays the same .. for now. We might add a bit of reasoning for the change but not yet …

Decision-making is a core task of leadership, but one which is often under-examined – the programme will explore what high-quality decision-making looks like and how staff across health and care can make the best use of the analysis available to them.

Sessions will be delivered virtually. The festival is open to everyone working in health and care and every session is free.

MDSN Insight 2022 homepage. 

Attendees can commit as little or as much time as they’d like. Most of the sessions will be recorded so you can fit them into your schedule in a way that suits you.

Insight festival 2022 flyer.

Confirmed speakers include:

• Alastair McLellan (Editor, Health Service Journal)
• Nigel Edwards (Chief Executive, The Nuffield Trust)
• Dr Bola Owolabi (Director – Health Inequalities, NHS England and NHS Improvement)
• Sir David Dalton (Governor, The Health Foundation)
• Julian Huppert (Director of the Intellectual Forum, Jesus College Cambridge)
• Ben Marshall and Michael Lawrie (Ipsos UK)
• Rony Arafin (Chief Executive Officer, AphA)
• Professor Angie Hobbs (Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy, University of Sheffield)
• Andi Orlowski (Director, The Health Economics Unit)
• Integrated Care Board Chief Executives from the Midlands region (including Amanda Sullivan, John Turner, Phil Johns, Toby Sanders)
• Eric Wolstenholme (Symmetric Scenarios) will present on

Understanding the links between Delayed Discharges and Hospital Congestion

Delayed discharge is a persistent problem in hospitals and there is growing momentum to address it. However, solutions are still elusive and decisions need to be made on the role of ICSs and government to help fund discharge.

This presentation suggests that the potential savings to health from reducing delays to discharge are being significantly underestimated in current solutions. Solving delayed discharge does directly save bed costs, but can also significantly reduce congestion, the use of reactive strategies to counter congestion and the unintended consequences of these for patients, staff and performance.

The talk will use system maps and archetypes to trace out feedback connections within hospital patient flows which give rise to congestion. It will be pertinent to those interested in the way hospitals function and/or the use of practical systems methods, but minimum analytical knowledge is necessary.

Eric Wolstenholme is a Professor of Management Science and Business Learning and has consulted and published widely in systems thinking and system dynamics. The presentation will allow time for questions/discussion and be available on line.

Associate readings are:

Wolstenholme, E.F. Using Cascaded and Interlocking Generic System Archetypes to Communicate Policy Insights—The Case for Justifying Integrated Health Care Systems in Terms of Reducing Hospital Congestion. Systems 2022, 10,135. https://doi.org/10.3390/ systems10050135 https://www.mdpi.com/2079-8954/10/5/135/pdf

Wolstenholme, E., McKelvie, D. (2019). Towards a Dynamic Theory of How Hospitals Cope in Times of High Demand. In: The Dynamics of Care. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21878-2_10

Programme of events coming soon…

#INSIGHT2022, @MidlandsDSN