Healthy Child Programme from 5 to 19 years old

The Healthy Child Programme (HCP) from 5 to 19 year olds sets out the recommended framework of universal and progressive services for children and young people to promote optimal health and wellbeing. It outlines suggested roles and responsibilities for commissioners, health, education, local authority and other partners to encourage the development of high-quality services. As the Operating framework for the NHS in England 2009/10 sets out, PCTs will want to review the transparency of their service offer in line with Healthy lives, brighter futures and local priorities, and this may include the HCP.

Published October 2009, 97 pages

Direct payment for health care: a consultation

This consultation document seeks views on the Government’s proposals for piloting direct payments for health care. This is part of the wider pilot programme to explore personal health budgets announced in High Quality Care For All. PCTs are already able to offer personal budgets that do not involve giving money directly to individuals. The Health Bill, which has now completed its main Parliamentary stages, would extend these options by providing power to allow direct payments, where the individual would be given the money to buy their own health care as agreed in a care-plan.

Published October 2009, 41 pages

NHS as the preferred provider

The Secretary of State’s recent speech at the King’s Fund focused on putting quality at the core of the NHS. He assured ‘the NHS is our preferred provider’. In his letter he shares with NHS Chief Executives how we propose to move this policy forward through the development of future guidance.

Published October 2009

Other documents and conferences

Conference: Delivering world class accessible and responsive general medical care services for patients - 27 November - York ; 3 December - Bristol ; 4 December - London ; 7 December - Birmingham

Location, location, location: Making choice of place of birth a reality

The WCC assurance handbook

The WCC assurance handbook sets out guidance on the content and process for SHAs and PCTs in implementing the assurance system for world class commissioning.

The Year 2 WCC assurance handbook is designed to focus on the key changes for the world class commissioning assurance framework, content and process for this year. While it does not repeat all the details of last year’s handbook (particularly where content remains the same), it provides sufficient overview to stand alone.

Published September 2009, 112 pages

Independent sector treatment centres

Independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) provide services to NHS patients but are owned and run by organisations outside the NHS. This briefing paper explains why ISTCs were introduced, and how they are funded, staffed and regulated.

It assesses their impact so far, including the quality of their services and whether they provide good value for money. Finally, it examines what their future may be now that the contracts ISTC providers hold with the Department of Health are beginning to expire.

Published October 2009, 10 pages

Evaluation top tips for commissioners and practitioners

This is a new paper from the Greater Manchester Public Health Practice Unit.

The paper aims to give commissioners and service providers a framework to enable a more efficient method of carrying out evaluation. It explains the purpose of evaluation, types of evaluation with examples, and discusses service user involvement and engagement.

Published September 2009, 16 pages

How to use NICE guidance to commission high-quality service: consultation

Following two stakeholder workshops held earlier this year, NICE has developed a “How to” guide on how NICE guidance can be used to support the commissioning of high-quality care and services. This guide is due to be launched at the NICE conference in December 2009. NICE are inviting you to comment on this guidance

Aiming high for disabled children: delivering improved health services

Providing effective health services for disabled children will improve outcomes for them and their families, ensure the child receives the best quality of care and provide better value for money. This report examines best practice around the country. It draws on examples of services for disabled children that meet users’ needs, respond to the government agenda and are effective from both a quality and a cost point of view.

Published September 2009, 20 pages

Health select Committee review of commissioning

The Health Select Committee has decided to undertake an inquiry into commissioning in the NHS.

The terms of reference for the inquiry are as follows:

1. "World-Class Commissioning": what does this initiative tell us about how effective commissioning by PCTs is?
2. The rationale behind commissioning: has the purchaser/ provider split been a success and is it needed?
3. Commissioning and "system reform": how does commissioning fit with Practice based Commissioning, "contestability" and the quasi-market, and Payment by Results?
4. Specialist commissioning;
5. Commissioning for the quality and safety of services.
   

Organisations and individuals are invited to submit written evidence to the inquiry.

The link between health spending and health outcomes for the new English primary care trusts

This report describes a model which takes into account population need in a way that has not previously been undertaken. The authors note that their work has a number of limitations including the use of a rather narrow outcome indicator (mortality) and the need to assume a relatively stable pattern of spending by PCTs across programmes over the recent past. Notwithstanding these limitations, the study offers clear confirmation that current expenditure by PCTs on some important programmes of care is highly cost-effective and illustrates how programme budgeting data can be used to generate information which might usefully inform PCTs' spending decisions.

Published June 2009, 64 pages

Shared vision for mental health - consultation

Good mental health is fundamental to the well-being and prosperity of England. In the last decade, greater investment and reforms have transformed mental health care, but now we need to go further.

We need to target the root causes of mental illness and support the local development of higher quality, more personalised services.

New Horizons sets out ideas for achieving this. It explores the prevention of mental illness and earlier intervention when things go wrong. It also looks at how services can become more innovative and work more effectively together.

Organisational Health

Organisational and system health; a new perspective on performance improvement? A new report from NHS Institute and Matrix Insight gives an accessible introduction to concepts of organisational health, details of case studies and a summary of implications for the NHS.

Published 2009, 33 pages

WCC support and development website soon

This new website has been set up for the support and development of world-class commissioning. The site, which is hosted by NHS Networks and supported by the Department of Health, contains news, policy, guidance and other resources for commissioners against each of the 11 competencies.

Commissioning in a cold climate

The World Class Commissioning programme is designed to improve the capacity and capability of primary care trusts (PCTs) to deliver better care, better health and better value for the populations they serve.

This discussion paper outlines the challenges facing commissioners over the next few years and identifies actions that PCTs might take to prepare their health economies for what is to come.

Published June 2009, 12 pages

Transforming community services: ambition, action, achievement

These Department of Health best practice guides have a vital role to play in the delivery of the intentions for High Quality Care for All: the Next Stage Review. They set out ambitions, taking action and measurement of the achievement and link with, should be read in conjunction with the quality framework/quality indicators.

Published June 2009

Joint commissioning framework for dementia

The National Dementia Strategy joint commissioning framework provides best practice guidance for commissioning dementia services. It includes a Joint Strategic Needs Assessment template, summary of NICE and SCIE evidence for dementia services, commissioning levers against each of the strategy's objectives and a summary of South East Coastal SHA dementia metrics.

Published June 2009, 72 pages

Making markets work for patients: Are commissioners up for it?

On the Kings Fund Blog John Appleby comments It’s now nearly two decades since the introduction of a separation between purchasers and providers in the NHS. In that time purchasers (as they were then called) should have come a long way in grappling with an essential commissioning task: understanding and managing markets. But with PCTs scoring worst on the World Class Commissioning competency of ‘stimulating the market’ it’s clear that there is still some way to go. The question is, does the NHS really understand what a complex and difficult task this market management is going to be?

(Published May 2009)

Understanding what matters: A guide to using patient feedback to transform care

Last autumn, health secretary Alan Johnson said he wanted to see NHS Trusts collecting and using “immediate feedback” from patients to drive service improvement.

To help the NHS harness the information it gathers, a guide – called ‘Understanding what matters: A guide to using patient feedback to transform services’ has been published.

The guide sets out best practice in terms of collecting, analysing and using patient feedback to transform services. It also includes examples of how the NHS is already using feedback from patients to get results.

This resource, is one of a number being produced to help services understand and respond to what really matters to patients and their experiences of care.

(Published May 2009, 34 pages)

Working better together? Managing local strategic partnerships

The Audit Commission national study 'Working better together? Managing local strategic partnerships' reviews arrangements for performance, resource management, and governance. The report identifies LSPs as evolving and maturing, local and national partners still need to recognise the key dynamics that support partnership working. Too few LSPs take an area-wide approach to performance and resource management. Some LSPs have well developed performance arrangements, but less developed resource management. And most LSPs have progress to make on their improvement journey if they are to deliver sustainable community strategy and LAA outcomes. LSPs that have good, shared systems for performance management (with performance reporting, resource allocation, and risk management) will find it easier to show that they are on track to achieve agreed outcomes than those that do not.

Published April 2009