ArticleHealth services research2023
A comparison of synthetic control approaches for the evaluation of policy interventions using observational data: Evaluating the impact of redesigning urgent and emergency care in Northumberland.
Article in Health services research, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
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- The impact of psychiatric decision units on mental health crisis care pathways: a synthetic control study.PLOS mental health · 2025Article
- A Bayesian multivariate factor analysis model for causal inference using time-series observational data on mixed outcomes.Biostatistics (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- The association of demographics, frailty and multiple health conditions with outcomes from acute medical admissions to hospitals in England: exploratory analysis of an administrative dataset.Future healthcare journal · 2023Article
- Back to basics: A mediation analysis approach to addressing the fundamental questions of integrated care evaluations.Health economics · 2023Article
- A comparison of synthetic control approaches for the evaluation of policy interventions using observational data: Evaluating the impact of redesigning urgent and emergency care in Northumberland.Health services research · 2023Article
- Implementing new models of care: Lessons from the new care models programme in England.International journal of care coordination · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo compare the original synthetic control (OSC) method with alternative approaches (Generalized [GSC], Micro [MSC], and Bayesian [BSC] synthetic control methods) and re-evaluate the impact of a significant restructuring of urgent and emergency care in Northeast England, which included the opening of the UK's first purpose-built specialist emergency care hospital. DATA SOURCES: Simulations and data from Secondary Uses Service data, a single comprehensive repository for patient-level health care data in England. STUDY
designHospital use of individuals exposed and unexposed to the restructuring is compared. We estimate the impact using OSC, MSC, BSC, and GSC applied at the general practice level. We contrast the estimation methods' performance in a Monte Carlo simulation study. DATA COLLECTION/EXTRACTION
methodsHospital activity data from Secondary Uses Service for patients aged over 18 years registered at a general practice in England from April 2011 to March 2019. PRINCIPAL
findingsNone of the methods dominated all simulation scenarios. GSC was generally preferred. In contrast to an earlier evaluation that used OSC, GSC reported a smaller impact of the opening of the hospital on Accident and Emergency (A&E) department (also known as emergency department or casualty) visits and no evidence for any impact on the proportion of A&E patients seen within 4 h.
conclusionsThe simulation study highlights cases where the considered methods may lead to biased estimates in health policy evaluations. GSC was found to be the most reliable method of those considered. Considering more disaggregated data over a longer time span and applying GSC indicates that the specialist emergency care hospitals in Northumbria had less impact on A&E visits and waiting times than suggested by the original evaluation which applied OSC to more aggregated data.
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