Murphy, Robert2024-08-192024-08-192024-06https://hdl.handle.net/10147/642635Healthcare productivity is crucial to our efforts to deliver the highest standard of care, to the greatest number of people, for the increasing amount of money we invest as a people in providing care. As Secretary General of the Department, I have stated before that the more productive we are, the more patients we can treat, the less time they have to wait, and the better outcomes we can achieve. As shown in this paper, using evidence from behavioural science can improve efficiency, treat more patients and generate savings which can, in turn, be further invested in healthcare. Behavioural science studies human behaviour through observation and experimentation. A key takeaway from behavioural science is that people often don’t make the best decisions. People use rules of thumb, can experience cognitive biases that affect judgments, have limited information, and face many life challenges. It is also the case that processes and systems are not always designed in the best way. This means that context and design matters. The way in which information is presented, and the environment in which decisions are made, have a significant impact. As a result, seemingly small changes can make big differences. Furthermore, such changes can be relatively low cost and quick to scale up.enAttribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/HEALTH SERVICESPRODUCTIVITYIINNOVATIONWorking Paper