The NHS, and health and care more widely, and important elements of the national and regional economies. It is important that the economic value, and any costs, of potential changes are recognised. The health economics workstream is therefore a key part of the partnership, helping to find out what health and social care staff care about and assessing whether proposed solutions offer good value for money.
This workstream will:
- help design and prioritise workforce interventions by understanding what health and social care staff want and need from their jobs,
- find out how much value staff place of different aspects of their job (such as pay, training opportunities, well-being or career progression) and to understand what they are willing to trade-off to get what matters most to them,
- evaluate the cost and impacts of implementing specific workforce interventions so we can understand whether they are worth the investment.
Opportunities in this workstream
There will be two main elements to the health economics workstream, which will be adapted and used in different projects as required.
- Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE)
A Discrete Choice experiment (DCE) is a form of survey which will develop our understanding of what matters most to staff when it comes to their jobs. We will work closely with our partners, look at existing research, and use findings from other parts of the project to decide which job features to include in the survey.
The DCE survey will ask staff to choose between different job scenarios that vary in aspects like pay, training opportunities, chances for promotion, location, and other key features. Analysis can then identify how much they value each of these features, and which are most important in their decision-making – essentially what features they would be willing to give up to gain another feature.
This will show us which areas should be prioritised when designing interventions to improve recruitment, retention, and staff wellbeing by understanding what really influences staff decisions.
- Economic Evaluation
Where changes have been made, we will look at the costs and outcomes of those interventions to understand their overall economic impact in real-world settings. This is called a cost-consequence analysis (CCA). We will calculate the costs of delivering the interventions, such as staff time and materials needed using standard NHS sources, and consider outcomes data (for example, staff retention rates) from the secondary data workstream, and other data sources we may identify. If appropriate, we will also carry out a cost benefit analysis (CBA) to see whether the benefits of the interventions outweigh the costs.
Opportunities in this workstream
There will be opportunities to contribute to the development of DCEs for different populations, and when these surveys are live we will share information on the Get Involved page.
