Some of the other arguments against are equally compelling

This argument, against a council proposal to build housing on a city centre car park, made me smile.

The Health Foundation analysis also finds that OPTICA adoption did not noticeably change the delayed discharge performance trend after adoption. This is from the Health Foundation's letter to the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), which has been reviewing NHSE's claims 👇

Now the Health Foundation have published the analysis that NHS England should have done. They compared Trusts which had adopted OPTICA to those which hadn't (red and blue lines in screenshot below), finding no noticeable difference between them.

NHS England, Palantir and its cheerleaders claim that the OPTICA tool cut discharge delays by 15%. But this was based on a before-and-after comparison. NHSE recently conceded that their study was not causal but have continued to attribute impact to the tool.

The Health Foundation study, which the FT reported on, is here. It includes this chart, showing the difference in delayed discharges between trusts using/not using OPTICA, the product Palantir and NHS England claim reduces delays by 15%. www.health.org.uk/sites/defaul...

Between Feb 26 and March 26 the waiting list fell by 110k - a record monthly drop. But the most recent data for March to May (when Streeting was still at health) shows this record-breaking reduction has been more than reversed. The waiting list rose by 112k in April and another 60k in May.

In his first speech as defence secretary, Wes Streeting reiterates his record at health in "achieving the biggest reduction in waiting in 17 years". Is that record still looking as good?

Predictably inconsistent Daily Mail editorial line (via Private Eye)

Rule 2: if your results are surprising and they make you feel good, be doubly cautious.

Rule 1 for analytical quality assurance: if your results are surprising, they're probably wrong. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

We know about the three planned NHS shifts. But there appears to be an unintended fourth one: mental health to physical health - seemingly caused by the second shift, analogue to digital.

A puzzling BBC headline yesterday, following publication of the ONS inflation estimates. Bread and cereals together account for only 1.8% of the CPI basket. Their price dropped by 2% between Dec and Jan, but the contribution to the fall in inflation is surely minimal?

Completed pathways grew by 0.3% in the FF20 trusts, compared to 3.7% elsewhere (12 times slower.) Total removals from the waiting list did grow slightly faster because “unreported removals” (cases that shouldn’t be on the waiting list being taken off) grew much more quickly.

So far, so good. But how the programme worked is not at all clear. It aimed to reduce waiting lists by speeding up hospital processes so surgeons could do more. If this happened we’d expect to see completed pathways (people treated from the waiting list) growing more quickly. But we don’t…

The difference is unlikely to have arisen by chance: there’s a 1 in 20 chance that a random selection of trusts would give the same results or better. We can’t, however, tell to how much of the difference is down to the characteristics of the 20 areas, and how much down to the FF20 programme.

We found that in the year from Oct 24 to Oct 25 waiting lists in the FF20 (crack team) trusts fell by 5.7% compared to a fall of 1.3% elsewhere. This supports the headline claim.

The 10YHP made the bold, false & easily refutable claim that there's unequivocal evidence that shifting care to the community is cheaper. The Impact Statement says their literature review found mixed impacts on costs. Suggesting the literature review was undertaken after the 10YHP was finalised?

What explains the divergence between consumer confidence of the over- and under-50s? @faisalislam.bsky.social for BBC www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Only 7 of 103 hospital trusts improved between Jul-Sep 2024 and Jul-Sep 2025. How they achieved this is not clear from the observable data. They increased nursing staff by more than other trusts, but the answer is likely to involve in wider process improvement.

This rise is mainly due to an 8% increase in the percentage of patients delayed, which rose from 14% of all discharges to 15%.

The UK’s pattern of mortality, which is relatively high at younger ages, is the reason that the UK ranks worse on life expectancy. Canada has a similar pattern of high mortality at younger ages. Using ASMR masks this.

Surprising because this picture is at odds with comparisons of life expectancy, which places the UK 2nd worst for females and 3rd worst for males (worse than the Netherlands and Denmark). Canada gets 6 places worse when life expectancy is used to rank countries. Also surprising.

How does the UK’s health compare? Researchers at LSHTM recently answered this by comparing age-standardised mortality rates (ASMR) across countries. This placed the UK 4th worst for females and 6th worst for males, out of 20. Surprisingly, UK does better than Netherlands (F) and Denmark (M).

I thought this very insightful too - initially it's specific tasks that get replaced first. Most jobs consist of more than specific tasks.

Completed pathways increased by 2.3% vs 7.9% for appointments. They haven’t risen as quickly as appointments because appointments per completed pathways has increased from 3.9 in July 23 – April 24, to 4.1 a year later.

First – is it a notable achievement? 4.6m extra appointments is an increase of 7.9% (table 1). But applying exactly the same approach to the previous year, (ie Jul 23 – Apr 24) the growth in appointments under the Conservatives was 5.5m, an increase of 10.5% (table 2).

What does all this mean? It’s well known that socioeconomic factors are amongst the most important wider determinants of health. But this analysis uniquely quantifies their impact drawing on individual level Census data.

These are the baseline and adjusted rates (for socioeconomic factors etc) for local authorities in all regions. When adjusted, around half have lower rates than Richmond. Compared to those in other regions, authorities in the North East do well.

This chart shows how the premature mortality rates of local authorities in the NE compare to those in Richmond. Some LAs have rates more than twice as LA. But if the LAs had the same socioeconomic and ethnicity make-up as Richmond, all except Darlington would have lower rates.