The first version of the
IFQO Statement of Principles was approved by the Central Policy
Co-ordinating Committee and posted on the member’s website.
It will be the first component of the IFQO webpage, to be
updated regularly with progress reports from key projects in each
country, and further questions and answers will be added as a way
of extending its scope and value to readers.
A quote from the DHSS in N Ireland states:
"While there is currently no policy which endorses activity based
funding as the way ahead for funding health services in Northern
Ireland, they are running exploratory shadow activity based funding
for acute admitted care services during 2008/09". We have
requested further information as to whether there is a plan or
current review of routine data returns specifically for mental
health.
In Wales the
One Wales document from the Coalition Government has made it
clear (see Section 3) that they will abolish the internal
market. There are a number of Consultation documents on
general reorganisation of NHS services and specifically proposals
on the future organisation of Mental Health Services, which will
set the agenda for the inter-relationship between funding and
quality issues.
I hope to be able to provide a detailed
briefing from Scotland next month on progress of the National
Benchmarking Project for Mental Health.
In England, College representatives attended a
Clinical Conference at St Thomas’s Hospital London on Payment by
Results for Mental Health. With the inclusion of plans in
Lord Darzi’s Next Stages Review to begin PBR in MH units by
20010/11, there is little doubt that this is going to happen, but
no certainty as to how. The full set of presentation slides
can be found on the
DH PBR website.
In collaboration with Connecting for Health, a
project is being set up to develop a ‘clinical
dashboard’ for mental health. This is a software
application that will run alongside the rest of a local computer
system, presenting continuously updated information about clinical
outcomes and quality measures. The idea is that individual
clinicians and their teams can evaluate their local service using
their own chosen measures.
With the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health,
the College is helping to set up a meeting to develop metrics that
might be used in a
Public Service Agreement to reduce Social Exclusion.
I hope that we will be able to add further
Q&As each month to those that are already accessible from the
IFQO website.
M Elphick
(Specialist Adviser, Information-based
Funding, Quality and Outcomes)