In a widely publicised report­­ from the Commonwealth Fund the UK was recently ranked as having the best health system in the world (or at least among the 11 nations studied). Countries have taken a wide range of approaches to setting up their health systems yet comparative studies of this kind are fairly infrequent as producing meaningful comparisons is difficult to do. So what do the results mean and what lessons are there for the NHS from this report?

Say you have a big idea and you would like to see it happen. How do you do this?

People may need to change their behaviour. To do that rules and incentives might need to be altered. The right arguments will need to be made to the right people at the right time so that a constellation of actions can be taken. To consider such a problem is to consider politics. In this way, an understanding of how politics operates can be very useful to healthcare professionals with big ideas.