FutureNHS

Improving the nation’s health: No place for anecdote and fairy tales

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Prevention is better than cure

On Monday last week, the Department of Health & Social Care published, ‘Prevention is better than cure – Our vision to help you live well for longer’.

Few would argue that prevention is a bad thing and the themes discussed in the paper are entirely consistent with current health policy which stresses the importance of integrated care, built around the implementation of Population Health Management (PHM) strategies.

Yet despite the paper being published on 5th November, for me at least the sky above refused to colour and sparkle. There was little to celebrate here that was genuinely new and excessive claims are made for the game changing capability of new technology and personal responsibility. Read More…

Identifying needs, building interventions and busting myths: adventures in population health

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Identifying needs, building interventions and busting myths: adventures in population health

At the recent Health Plus Care Show at London Excel I spoke in the Transforming Primary Care Theatre. The insights I shared were harvested from a number of engagements that Sollis has had with Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) over a five year period commencing in 2012. More recently this work has concerned itself with population health analytics, where we have worked with local commissioners, including clinicians, in order to help them gain a better understanding of the current and future health status/needs of their local populations. Read More…

A Way Forward for Community Based Care

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Primary Care Home

This is the second of two guest posts by Professor David Colin-Thomé. Part one: Primary Care Home The Primary Care Home (PCH) is a concept I first described some ten years ago. It is a population budgeted, community based provider organisation able to provide an alternative to current NHS hospital centricity. A home not only … Read more

Primary Care Home

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Primary Care Home

A sustainable and transformed NHS is not possible without a sustainable general practice.
A confident general practice must be forcing the pace on necessary NHS culture change. The Primary Care Home is more than only being a care model, it offers a unique opportunity to ensure the foundation of NHS care will remain list-based primary care. Read More…

The Times They are a-Changin’

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Reorganisation... again

David Nicholson famously described the Health and Social Care Act of 2012 as “a reorganisation so big that you can see it from outer space.”

Whisper it quietly but the biggest NHS reorganisation since the last one is happening before our very eyes. The difference this time is that the great majority of the general public are most likely unaware, not least because everyone involved is very careful not to mention the R word. Read More…

Population Health and Risk Stratification — Time to get Serious

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In October this year NHS Clinical Commissioners published a document called Local Solutions to National Challenges. It is worth a read, not least because it re-states the raison d’être of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs).

This is important because in the document there is an acceptance that the Five Year Forward View (5YFV) is a game changer and that transformation is not an option. Unsurprisingly the not so hidden sub-text is that Clinical Commissioning Groups are key agents of that change. Read More…

Population Health Management — The Writing’s on the Wall

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Writing on the wall population health management

The Health Service Journal (HSJ) reports that NHS England is currently working on a new commissioning strategy. Unsurprisingly references are made to an accountable care system and the role of CCGs within it. Place-based commissioning also gets a name-check. The Kings Fund will be pleased. Read More…

Population Health Management — All Together Now

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Last week the ever excellent Kings Fund published a new report called ‘Place-based systems of care: A way forward for the NHS in England’. Within its pages there exist powerful arguments for why the ‘zero-sum game’ that characterises the current NHS (aka. The Purchaser/Provider divide) has had its day. The report pictures a future where NHS organisations are increasingly collaborating to manage the finite resources — people and money — available to them.

Unsurprisingly, Accountable Care Organisations (ACOs) get another name-check and a new world of commissioning is proposed in which commissioners — spanning wider geographies than at present — take on a strategic role for defining outcomes and measuring the performance of the health and social care system as a whole. Read More…