• February/March 2009

I continue to have much more news of developments in England than other countries despite efforts to strengthen links.  I visited Cardiff recently and hope to be able to produce a report on relevant work in Wales, and a visit to Glasgow is planned in the near future. Please contribute!

 

Payment by Results:

 

The present status of the national project is that there are several pilot sites collecting care cluster data, while other Trusts have expressed an interest across the country.  The level of awareness of PBR and the quality agenda within Trust executive teams has grown lately.  It has been agreed that the currency for costing and tariffs will be care clusters rather then care pathways (ie funding will follow the numbers of episodes within each problem or need-defined group, rather than the care provided).  Issues relating to the definition of the start and end points of episodes need to be resolved, as does the interaction between health and social care. There is work in progress (to finish by Sept 09) to produce a costing dataset to test financial parameters such as the variance in costs within each cluster, and differences in costs between the clusters.  A list of ten action points for provider organisations to prepare for PBR has been produced by the project team, which is being expanded into a more detailed document for publication in the near future.

 

SHA Area Involved Interested
North West Pennine Care and PCTs

Cheshire and Wirral FT (and commissioners)

Greater Manchester West MH Trust

Mersey Care NHS Trust

East Midlands Lincolnshire Partnership

Derbyshire Partnership

Leicester Partnership

East of England

Norfolk and Waveney Mental Health FT

Trust

Suffolk MH Partnership Trust
South West

Devon Partnership NHS Trust

Plymouth PCT

2gether Foundation Trust (Gloucester)
South Central

Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire FT

Berkshire Partnership FT

Hampshire Partnership NHS Trust
South East Coast  

Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust

Sussex Partnership FT

 

 

10 Steps Guide to preparing for MH PbR:

 

  1. Understand your services in terms of clusters
  2. Make use of available resources on-line and with events
  3. Make preparation a joint project involving commissioners, providers and local authority providers
  4. Discuss with your Strategic Health Authority (SHA) your local approach
  5. Allow for training time for staff
  6. Understand the Information Issues
  7. Align outcomes development work with the clusters
  8. Think about the impact on contracting arrangements, including the standard contract
  9. Identify a senior lead individual within your organisation and identify clinical, finance and informatics leads
  10. Establish local timelines

 

Link to the PBR website (click here for latest news)

 

Clinical Data Standards Network:

 

A small preliminary meeting was held on 26th February, organised by  the UK Terminology Centre, in one of the Connecting for Health offices in Leeds to consider whether a network of clinicians should be set up to act as a forum to assist the standardisation of clinical terms, datasets, document formats, etc.  I was there as a representative of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.  Further meetings are planned.

 

Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN):

 

‘We want quality to be part of the commissioner-provider discussion everywhere. The CQUIN payment framework is one of a range of commitments in High Quality Care for All designed to support the cultural shift to put quality at the heart of the NHS. It makes a proportion of provider income conditional on locally agreed quality and innovation goals: this is 0.5% of contract value in 2009/10, and it is expected to grow over time.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mental Health Data Requirements Review, and Care Quality Indicators:

 

The review, and separately the CQIs, the consultations for both of which were held last year, are about to be published by the Information Centre for Health and Social Care.

 

Connecting for Health/ NPfIT  ‘Rising to the Informatics Challenge’:

 

An important and constructive meeting of about 60 representatives from different stakeholder organisations was held in London on 27th March.  The main focus of agreement was on the need to establish an organised national forum to support MH informatics.  Dr Joe McDonald, the Clinical Lead for CFH, chaired the meeting and with other members of the (reasonably representative) Pan-programme MH Co-ordinating Group will write a paper summarising the outcome of the meeting and proposing a way forward.

 

Mental Health Inequalities: Measuring What Counts’:

 

This seminar was initiated by the DH and organised by the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health and the College. It was held on 16th March in London.  The aim was to look at what measures would best drive reductions in reported mental health inequalities through:

  • Public Service Agreements
  • National Indicator Sets (Local Area Agreements)
  • NHS Vital Signs
  • World Class Commissioning Datasets.

 

Work groups examined seven cross-cutting themes on ‘a good start to life’, ‘working lives’, ‘the places we live’, ‘financial security’, ‘social connectedness and social capital’, ‘body and mind’, and ‘later life’.

 

Among the documents provided for delegates were the following which may be of particular interest:

 

Commissioning for Outcomes v2 (a discussion paper for MH and Social Care)

 

Mental Health Indicators (a list of current quality measures)

 

The results of the meeting will be used in the preparation by the SCMH of an advisory document which is to published shortly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© 2009 Royal College of Psychiatrists