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kurtstat.bsky.social
Healthcare data analyst. Aspiring Munroist.
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There are some really good points here made by @awilliamson1.bsky.social (about 13:30 into the podcast) about how measurement needs to be bottom-up to be successful. Performance metrics should be jointly defined and agreed, not imposed from on high. Oh, and measurement can be motivating, too!

I've been developing my >12-hour A&E stay chart, the one inspired by @edhawkins.org's iconic #warmingstripes. My latest idea is to compare six EDs on the same chart. I may have inadvertently invented a new 'Guess the hospital' picture round for NHS Scotland University Challenge... #rstats #ggplot2

utterly sublime

"Just as some of us of the cold old English school had to make adjustments when hugging and double cheek-kissing people on first acquaintance became acceptable, ... the post-boomers feel the same way about suddenly being communicated with." davidaaronovitch.substack.com/p/bad-manners

My A&E #warmingstripes experiments continue. Given that even the lowest value in this time series was 2,532 (Aug 2011), I don't think the colour gradient should start at blue, or even white; it should be shades of red all the way across. The highest value was 212,280 (Dec 2022). #rstats #ggplot2

Went for a clifftop walk at St Abb's Head.

"[TikTok's] fundamental insight is that social media isn’t really social at all. It’s not a way for friends to connect with friends. TikTok cares about what you’re interested in, what grabs your attention, what triggers you." open.substack.com/pub/ianlesli...

HI I’D LIKE TO ADD YOU TO MY PROFESSIONAL NETWORK ON LINKED IN

This is a nice practical guide to data visualization by @nrennie.bsky.social @royalstatsoc.bsky.social! royal-statistical-society.github.io/datavisguide/

I'm seeing if I can show patient arrivals into three hospital staging posts on one chart. Here's my first attempt. I chose a day at random, I'm trying to show the spacing and clustering of arrivals in each staging post. Still needs a bit of work... #rstats #ggplot2 1/2

At least the BMJ reported this huge story about excess deaths cause by long A&E waits. Almost nobody else did: www.bmj.com/content/389/...

There are a handful of good operational processes that are universally agreed to be good practice in effective organisations. From good logistics through performance management, to analysis and problem solving...

"...the reason most people are unhappy is because they’re waking up each morning to a public realm that seems shittier and more annoying to deal with than it was yesterday, even as they’re paying more for its upkeep." Brilliant article by @mjrobbins.com.

I am trying to understand a bit more about climate science but I got confused today when I saw this statement in this @theguardian.com article: www.theguardian.com/environment/... My understanding up to this point had been that global mean temperature is 15 °C. Where am I going wrong?

'Just cutting a budget without a well thought-out plan doesn’t magically improve efficiency, and it’s very likely to disrupt the healthcare you were trying to deliver.' www.bmj.com/content/389/...

I think we're getting close to the point when @whitefleece.bsky.social and I are ready to launch our #KnowYourFlow and #TriptychMetrics slogans into the World of Unscheduled Care!

This was a really clear explanation by @nrennie.bsky.social of how to go about creating interactive charts in R. I feel properly enthused!

That was a great @nhsrcommunity.bsky.social Coffee and Coding session just now. @johnmackintosh.bsky.social showed us how he made his interactive population pyramids and now I want to have a go... johnmackintosh.com/blog/2025-04...

In this era, I think it's more useful to sort people by whether they participate in democratic discourse or disordered discourse, rather than left vs right.

Roses are red Violets are blue Overfull \hbox (53.04803pt too wide) in paragraph at lines 136--163 And so are you

Thankyou to @nrennie.bsky.social, Jordan Richards and @EdinbR.fosstodon.org.ap.brid.gy for the EdinbR meetup tonight. Nicola made Observable feel like it could now be in my 'adjacent possible', which it absolutely was not before tonight!

"...over 25% of people were waiting more than 4 hours in A&E in April and nearly 45,000 people waited over 12 hours on a trolley because hospital beds were unavailable." Words from @sarahscobie.bsky.social in this @nuffieldtrust.bsky.social press release. www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/nu...

Yes, I agree. This is one of @jonnelledge.bsky.social's best newsletters. The mood change from "Extremely angry at Labour series of bullet points" to "This is a book wheel..." made my day!

My quest to understand how these three numbers relate to each other has entered its second successive day.

This talk by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com this afternoon was excellent. One of the big takeaways for me was that 'image-plus-text' beats 'just image' or 'just text' every time.

Inspired by the excellent Congress of Business Climate Action conference in Glasgow yesterday, I tried describing a hospital's A&E >12-hour stays as #warmingstripes. I've always loved @edhawkins.org's iconic visualization and now I think I might've found the NHS issue it works best with. #ggplot2

“And so the Greeks send me this horse, we’re talking about one of the most beautiful horses you’ve ever seen. So big. So strong. Normally they keep this kind of horse for themselves but they were such big fans they said sir, please take our big wonderful horse we’ll even bring it to your house”

So pleased we’ve identified foreign carehome workers who do the toughest jobs for fuck all money as the big problem with the country. Was worried it might be someone else.

A comprehensive comms success.

Last week I argued that health policy could be improved by building in a Devil's Advocate to the policy process to challenge bad proposals: www.hsj.co.uk/daily-insigh... I suspect, given this week's news on immigration policy, the Cabinet needs one too.