• Healthcare quality improvement
• Health policy
• Health professions education

At times, the decision to redesign a healthcare service may be driven by a sense that ‘something must be done’, for instance evidence of a significant failure within a hospital or national data indicating variable provision of evidence-based care. Under such circumstances, planners may look to their past experiences or let themselves be guided by research evidence; they may also turn to solutions perceived as self-evidently good ideas. Examples of such apparently ‘common sense’ interventions include the ongoing drives towards integration of various domains of care1 and 7-day working2: these are commonly seen as likely to bring about such desirable improvements as increased provision of evidence-based care and better patient experience and outcomes.

Perhaps another apparently common sense intervention is the introduction of single-room accommodation, the impact of which in a hospital based in the English NHS is evaluated by Maben et al.3 By moving staff and patients to a nearby, newly built hospital, the cost and disruption likely to result from converting a hospital from traditional wards and bays to single rooms were avoided, making this intervention relatively straightforward. Further, the intervention …