Profile

Biography

Nils Gutacker is a Senior Research Fellow in the Health Policy Team. He joined the Centre for Health Economics in 2009. He holds a PhD in Economics and a MSc in Health Economics, both from the University of York, and a BSc in Health Care Management from the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. 

Nils’ research focuses on unwarranted variation in health care provision, performance assessment of health care providers, measurement of health care quality using patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), and the cost-effectiveness of (non-)financial incentives.

Research

Overview

• Performance assessment and efficiency analysis
• Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs)
• Incentive schemes including public reporting and pay-for-performance
• International comparisons of health system performance
• Equity analysis
• Multilevel and hierarchical modelling

Projects

Nils is involved in several research projects, including:

• ESHCRU II - Policy Research Unit in the Economics of Health Systems and Interface with Social Care – Funded by the Department of Health Policy Research Programme
• Efficiency, cost and quality of mental healthcare provision – Funded by the Health Foundation
• Cost-effectiveness of deploying GPs in the Emergency Department – Funded by the NIHR HS&DR Programme
• Evaluating the cost-effectiveness of the Best Practice Tariff for hip fracture – Funded by NHS England
• Review and Update of the Indices of Deprivation 2015 – Health Deprivation and Disability Domain – Funded by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
• Evaluation of Yorkshire Ambulance Service Urgent and Emergency Care nurse internship programme – Funded by the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account
• Modelling Healthcare-Evidence Responsive Behaviours (HERB) in Doctors: A proof of concept study – Funded by the University of York Research Priming Fund
• Does better quality of primary care influence admissions and health outcomes for people with serious mental illness (SMI)? A linked patient-level analysis of the full patient care pathway – Funded by the NIHR HS&DR grant 13/54/40
• Evidence Based Transformation with the NHS – Funded by the NIHR CLAHRC Yorkshire and Humber
• Economics of Social and Health Care Research Unit (ESHCRU) – Funded by the Department of Health Policy Research Programme grant 103/0001 

Past Projects

• Developing an online web tool to inform patients about their likely outcome of surgery to impact on shared decision making in primary care in York – Funded by the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account
• The role of EQ-5D value sets based on patient preferences in the context of hospital choice in the national PROM programme in England – Funded by the EuroQol Research Foundation
• Evaluating the development of medical revalidation in England and its impact on organisational performance and medical practice – Funded by the Department of Health Policy Research Programme grant PR-R9-0114-11002
• Combining routinely collected data and patient outcomes to measure the outcome/cost ratios of hospital procedures and identify variation across providers - Funded by the NIHR HS&DR grant 09/2000/47 
• Do higher primary care practice performance scores predict lower rates of emergency admissions for persons with serious mental illness? An analysis of secondary panel data - Funded by the NIHR HS&DR grant10/1011/22 
• European Collaboration for Healthcare Optimization (ECHO) - Funded by the 7th European Union Framework Programme 
• Review and Update of the Indices of Deprivation 2015 – Health Deprivation and Disability Domain – Funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government grant CPD/04/106/061

Research group(s)

• Health Policy Team

Supervision

• Abulrahman Al Quait (Thesis Advisor)

Teaching

Postgraduate

• MSc in Economic Evaluation for Health Technology Assessment

Other teaching

Centre for Health Economics

• Analysing patient data using hospital episode statistics (HES) to evaluate healthcare policy and practice