Better Care Fund Weekly Update - 11 December 2015
Better Care update note from Anthony Kealy, Programme Director
11 December 2015In this week’s note:
- Sign up for a webinar on information sharing to support integrated care
- Request for examples of integrated care to share
- Amended Section 75 regulations
- Insight visits to Southampton and Sheffield
Sign up for webinar:
information sharing to support integrated care
If you work as an integrated care programme lead, or lead on
information governance or information sharing, you are invited to join an
introductory webinar organised by the Better Care Fund support team, on Thursday
17 December from 10:00-11:30. This webinar will provide an overview of the
new guidance and support available around the sharing of information to support
integrated care.
- Provide an overview of a new Information Sharing User Framework and resources developed through the Pioneer programme to provide guidance on information sharing for different aspects of integrated care
- Introduce local areas to some of the key organisations supporting improved practices in relation to information sharing in integrated care (including the Local Government Association, Information Governance Alliance, the Better Care Support Team and the Centre of Excellence for Information Sharing)
- Provide details of planned regional events in 2016 focusing on information sharing to support integrated care.
if you have any questions about the webinar or workshops please do not hesitate to get in touch with Emma Barugh (Project Manager) at emmabarugh@nhs.net
Request for examples
of integrated care
Local areas tell us that they welcome opportunities to learn
from how each other are implementing integrated care. The regional ‘Sharing
and Learning’ events that Primary Care Commissioning (PCC) are running on
behalf of the Better Care Support Team are an excellent opportunity to do that.
Let us know about your successes – as well as any challenges you’ve overcome – so that we can help you learn from each other. Contact us at england.bettercaresupport@nhs.net or tell PCC directly at sean.fenelon@pcc.nhs.uk or charlotte.goodson@pcc.nhs.uk.
Amended Section 75
regulations
The NHS Bodies and Local Authorities Partnership Arrangement
Regulations underpin Section 75 arrangements of the NHS Act 2006. They set out
which bodies can enter into partnership arrangements for health functions. In
the last Parliament, the government consulted on the proposal to amend the
regulations to allow CCGs and/or local authorities to pool budgets with NHS
England to enable a wider and more integrated set of services to be
commissioned from GP practices under a common set of contractual arrangements.
It should be noted that the change is permissive: areas can, but will not be expected to make use of this new flexibility. Furthermore, overall accountability for the provision of core GP services will still be held by NHS England. The regulations stipulate that these partnership arrangements can only be used where they are likely to lead to an improvement in the exercise of the health function. To make use of this change, the regulations state that the partners would need to jointly consult those who would be affected.
The amended regulations also make two further changes:- In situations where CCGs and local authorities are required by legislation to enter into some form of partnership arrangement that they should no longer have to consult beforehand. In short because this is burdensome and unnecessary, however, this does not extend to the situation outlined above where partners might voluntarily pool budgets for additional primary medical services.
- The amended regulations take into account the abolition of the Audit Commission.
Update on Better Care
Insight Visits: Luton and the Wirral
In the last week, the Better Care Support Team has
Southampton and Sheffield as part of our Insight Visits programme. The Insight
Visits are an opportunity for the national team to understand what local areas
are doing well with regards to integrated care, and what national and regional
support would be helpful to address their challenges.
Southampton visit
Last week we visited Southampton, where we were given the
opportunity to attend a local stakeholder event focusing on the progress of the
BCF and integrated care agenda in the last 18 months.
After the stakeholder event, we caught up with some of the senior HWB leads within Southampton.
The local integrated model in the city is based around cluster teams linked to GP practices, serving populations of 30-50,000.We were particularly interested to hear about the success Southampton are finding with reducing DTOC rates – they attribute their significant reductions to a very effective discharge pathway that has considerable senior leadership involvement, including weekly monitoring. We also heard encouraging things about their rehab and reablement service.
Southampton are looking at a big picture when it comes to integrated services in the future, and are exploring how they can make the most of opportunities with prevention initiatives, the regional devolution bid, and using the high level of council-owned social housing as a lever for public health work.Sheffield
This week really was the week of the ‘mega poolers’ –
Southampton and Sheffield are the two biggest poolers to their Better Care
Fund. Sheffield have pooled a total BCF budget of £242m this year. Local
clinicians, senior leaders and individual workstream leads led a series of
really insightful presentations on the individual schemes underway in the city.
This steady partnership has produced a really clear and well-defined programme of work, centred around:
- Keeping people well: A really joined up approach combining community support workers, information sharing agreements with every GP practice, a central referral system, strong involvement and development of housing services, local community partnerships, and an evaluation partnership with Sheffield University.
- Person centred care: We saw a really well developed approach to care planning, with strong GP engagement, and underpinned by use of patient activation measures.
- Active support and recovery: Sheffield have developed core service principles, and are pursuing the introduction of a provider alliance that will involve all the statutory bodies and the third sector.
This week
Our next update note will include summaries of our visits to
Birmingham and Bexley. If you’d like any more information on the visits, please
get in touch with Dan.Gocke@nhs.net.
Anthony Kealy
Better Care Support Team Programme Director
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