Mr Gavin Rudge Msc

Institute of Applied Health Research
Research Fellow

Contact details

Address
Murray Learning Centre
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Gavin Rudge is a research Fellow in the Institute of Applied Health Research. He has 20 years experience in Health Services research and prior to joining the University had a career in the Health Service as an information analyst and a Clinical Audit manager.

His research interests are health geography, quality in healthcare and data mining. 

Qualifications

  • MSc in Managing Quality in Health Care 2003

Biography

Gavin has worked in the health sector since 1991, when he became a workforce analyst at the West Midlands Regional Health Authority. Drawing on earlier private sector experience in quality measurement, he then joined the first wave of clinical audit staff employed in the NHS, first as a medical audit facilitator working with GPs in a Family Health Services Authority and then as a Clinical Audit manager in a community services provider trust. 

Gavin joined the Department of Public Health at the University of Birmingham in 2000 initially working on the methodological basis of case-mix adjustment, drawing on his background in clinical informatics. He then went on to manage the West Midlands Accident and Emergency Surveillance Centre hosted here in the University and also ran the Regional ‘Safe Haven’ which was a programme to provide data and data analysis to the local health economy using access to the national secondary care database. 

Since April 2011 he has been a Research Fellow working on a wide variety of externally funded research projects mainly in Health Services Research. He has an interest in health geography and more recently his portfolio has extended into collaborations with Geography Departments.

As well as undertaking research, Gavin teaches on post-graduate and undergraduate programmes in the College of Medical and Dental Sciences.

Teaching

Postgraduate supervision

Gavin supervises Master's dissertations on the Master's in Public Health (MPH) programme.

Research

Gavin is currently working on the following projects:

  • WM-Air  is a wide ranging multi-agency research initiative led by the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences here at Birmingham.  It will explore air quality in the West Midlands.  Gavin is tasked with delivering analyses of the epidemiological data which will be incorporated into the study. The study is funded by the Natural Environmental Research Council.
  • The HiSLAC project, a national study of the move towards seven-day services in the English NHS. Gavin has compiled a large data warehouse of admissions data for England and is working on mortality risk adjustment models. The study is due to report at the end of 2019.  This project is funded by the National Institute for Health Research.
  • USE-IT: Unlocking Social and Economic Innovation Together. This is a project which explores how local community assets can be mobilised in response to large-scale infrastructure investment in the inner city. It works across many disciplines including Geography, The Business School, Health and Urban and Regional Planning. It is funded by the European Union. 
  • The collaboration for Leadership in Applied Research and Care West Midlands (CLAHRC-WM ) was a collaboration between the NHS, the Universities of Birmingham, Warwick and a range of third sector and Local Government organisations. Gavin was an active researcher in this collaboration.  The project ended recently but he is working on a range of legacy projects including a number of studies in child and maternal health.  These include an observational study of emergency admission of neonates (recently published) and a study of emergency readmission of women following a birth event which is currently being prepared for publication. CLAHRC-WM was funded by the National Institute for Health Research. 
  • Gavin's interest in Geographical Information Systems leads to a number of requests for support in other research programmes where analysis and visualisation of spatial variables are needed or where skills in handling neighbourhood profiling data are required. In this capacity he advises or supports projects in a wide range of areas such as: medical education, childhood obesity, research into secondary care re-configuration, climate and health and synthetic estimation of deprivation in non-standard geographies. 

Publications

Comorbidity phenotypes and risk of mortality in patients with ischaemic heart disease in the UK. Crowe, F., Zemedikun, D., Okoth, K., Adderley, N., Rudge, G., Sheldon, M., Nirantharakumar, K. & Marshall, T., 28 Jan 2020, (Accepted/In press) In : Heart.

 Walkability and its association with prevalent and incident diabetes among adults in different regions of Germany: results of pooled data from five German cohorts, Kartschmit, N., Sutcliffe, R. Sheldon, M., Moebus, S., Greiser, K., Hartwig, S., Thürkow, D., Stentzel, U., van den Berg, N., Wolf, K., Maier, W., Peters, A., Ahmed, S., Köhnke, C., Mikolajczyk, R., Wienke, A., Kluttig, A., Rudge, G. 13th January 2020, BMC Endocrine Disorders 2020, 20:7

The rise and fall of the weekend effect Rudge, G.,  1st August 2019, Journal of Health Services Research & Policy 2019, 24; 4

The impact of the Diabetes Inpatient Care and Education (DICE) project on length of stay and mortality Akiboye, F., Adderley, N., Martin, J., Gokhale, K.,Rudge, G., Marshall, T., Rajendran, R., Nirantharakumar, K.& Rayman, G., 14 May 2019, (Accepted/In press) In : Diabetic Medicine.

Hospitalisation after birth of infants: cross sectional analysis of potentially avoidable admissions across England using hospital episode statistics Jones, E.,Taylor, R., Rudge, G., MacArthur, C., Jyothish, D., Simkiss, D.& Cummins, C.,20 Dec 2018, In : BMC Pediatrics.18, 390.

Sicker patients account for the weekend mortality effect among adult emergency admissions to a large hospital trust Sun, J.,Girling, A.,Aldridge, C., Evison, F., Beet, C., Boyal, A.,Rudge, G., Lilford, R. J. & Bion, J.,9 Oct 2018, In : BMJ quality & safety.8 p.

Two-epoch cross-sectional case record review protocol comparing quality of care of hospital emergency admissions at weekends versus weekdays Bion, J.,Aldridge, C. P.,Girling, A.,Rudge, G., Beet, C., Evans, T., Temple, R. M., Roseveare, C., Clancy, M., Boyal, A., Tarrant, C., Sutton, E., Sun, J., Rees, P., Mannion, R.,Chen, Y-F., Watson, S. I. & Lilford, R.,22 Dec 2017, In : BMJ open.7, 12, e018747.

Weekend specialist intensity and admission mortality in acute hospital trusts in England: a cross-sectional study Aldridge, C., Bion, J., Boyal, A., Chen, Y-F., Clancy, M., Evans, T., Girling, A., Lord, J., Mannion, R., Rees, P., Roseveare, C., Rudge, G., Sun, J., Tarrant, C., Temple, M., Watson, S., Lilford, R. & HiSLAC Collaborative, 9 Jul 2016, In : The Lancet.388, 10040,p. 178-1869 p.

Environmental public health tracking: a cost-effective system for characterizing the sources, distribution and public health impacts of environmental hazards Saunders, P., Middleton, J. & Rudge, G., 1 Dec 2016, In : Journal of Public Health.39, 3,p. 506-5138 p.

Multiple component patient safety intervention in English hospitals: controlled evaluation of second phase Benning, A., Dixon-Woods, M., Nwulu, U., Ghaleb, M., Dawson, J., Barber, N., Franklin, B. D., Girling, A., Hemming, K.,Carmalt, M.,Rudge, G., Naicker, T.,Kotecha, A., Derrington, M. C. & Lilford, R.,3 Feb 2011, In : BMJ.342, 7793, p. 370d199

Rudge G, Mohammed MA, Fillingham SC, Girling A, Stevens AJ. (2013) The combined influence of distance and neighbourhood deprivation on Emergency Department attendance in a large English population: a retrospective database study.  PLOS 1. 2013, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.006794

Mohammed M; Lilford R; Rudge G; Holder R; Stevens A (2013) The findings of the Mid-Staffordshire Inquiry do not uphold the use of hospital standardized mortality ratios as a screening test for 'bad' hospitalsQJM 2013; doi: 10.1093/qjmed/hct101

Mohammed MA, Rudge G, Wood G, et al (2012) Which Is More Useful in Predicting Hospital Mortality -Dichotomised Blood Test Results or Actual Test Values? A Retrospective Study in Two Hospitals.  PLOS1 7(10): e46860. doi:10.1371

Mohammed M.A, Sidhu KS, Rudge G, Stevens AJ. (2012) Weekend admission to hospital has a higher risk of death in the elective setting than in the emergency setting: A retrospective database study of national health service hospitals in England.  BMC Health Services Research. 2012, 12:87

Benning A, Nwulu U, Ghaleb M, Dawson J, Barber N, Dean-Franklin B, Girling A, Hemming K, Carmalt M, Rudge G, Dixon-Woods M, Naicker T, Kotecha A , Lilford R. (2011) A controlled evaluation of the second phase of a complex patient safety intervention in English hospitals. BMJ. 2011; 342:doi:10.1136/bmj.d195

Mohammed MA, Deeks JJ, Girling A, Rudge G, Carmalt M, Stevens AJ, Lilford RJ. Evidence of methodological bias in hospital standardised mortality ratios: retrospective database study of English hospitals. BMJ 338:b780

Rudge G, Cheng K, Fillingham S, Cooke M, Stevens A.(2008) How has the extension of drinking hours in England affected patterns of Emergency Department use at a large urban hospital? Annals of Emergency Medicine 51:4, 553

Taylor J, Law G, Boyle P, Feng Z, Gilthorpe M, Parslow R, Rudge G, Feltbower R, (2008) Does population mixing measure infectious exposure in children at the community level? European Journal of Epidemiology 23:593-600

Downing A, Rudge G, Cheng Y, Tu YK, Keen J, Gilthorpe MS, (2007) Do the UK government's new Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) scores adequately measure primary care performance? A cross-sectional survey of routine healthcare data. BMC Health Services Research, 7:166