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Commissioning Best Practice Checklist
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Commissioning within health and social care has seen a high profile focus in recent years with a number of contributing policies driving change including:
- Our Health; Our Care; Our Say - the white paper identifying the necessary provider commissioner split;
- Introduction of Payment by Results;
- Practice Based Commissioning;
- The introduction of section 31 to support pooled budgets; joint commissioning and shared management;
- Care Closer to Home policy; and
- Patient Choice
Historically, services have been commissioned based on what was offered to commissioners by providers. This has limited innovation and the delivery of care models based on new ways of working by commissioners and service leads. It has also led to commissioners financing services which may not be necessary for the local population, or that they are unaware they are funding as the services have been developed by stealth, but the cost of their introduction has been absorbed in the block contracts for services.
Oakleigh believe that the changing directions and focussed national policy on commissioning should be strategically integrated to give the option to deliver high quality services to users of health and social care services and deliver on local and national targets, whilst ensuring appropriate spending and allocation of public funds.
The New World of Commissioning
Commissioning is no longer the management of contracts to provide services, but the building blocks for delivery of appropriate quality care delivered in the right place by the right person with the right skill. These building blocks are supported by other interdependent work undertaken including:
- Re-designing of care pathways;
- Introduction of new initiatives and ways of working as a result of other initiatives and policies including modernising medical careers and new ways of working;
- Strategic development of services within the community, supporting the shift of care from secondary to primary care;
- Working in partnership with local authorities;
- Unbundling of tariffs; and
- Provision of services by independent and third sectors, beyond the traditional service provision routes, introducing contestability
There are fundamental principles to the new ways of commissioning which will ensure development and maintenance of high quality, relevant service provision to your local population. These include:
- Commissioning only evidence based, best practice care pathways;
- Re-designing the pathway you require yourself, to improve the service or deliver the service more efficiently and cost effectively;
- Ensuring that commissioning is now an integrated and inclusive process, working with clinicians and local authority partners to commission the best pathways for the client;
- Ensuring outcomes based commissioning where there are clear and regular measurements on the health and well being services being provided;
- Recognising there are new potential providers of services including independent and third sectors as well as social enterprises and community organisations; and
- Only introducing new services to support the local public health strategy and the attainment of national and local targets
Oakleigh and Commissioning
Oakleigh's expertise in commissioning is wide reaching. Our consultancy teams are made up of experts in procurement, activity based costing, health audit, and finance. A number of our consultants have extensive clinical backgrounds, including mental health, urgent care, day surgery, radiology, and IM&T. Also within the Health division there is vast experience at NHS senior managerial and director level within acute, PCT and mental health trusts as well as PBC boards
We are presently working with CSIP to deliver a series of workshops to support London Commissioners. The workshops cover a range of commissioning issues as well as other related subjects including unbundling tariffs and designing care pathways.
The presentations from the workshops are available by contacting Alicia Hinton at aliciahinton@oakleigh.co.uk
Download Commissioning Checklist
We have developed a commissioning checklist as a brief aide memoir to commissioners to ensure the latest commissioning rounds are inclusive of best practice.
If you have any questions about the subjects covered in this white paper or you would like to find out more about how Oakleigh Consulting could help your organisation, please contact us on 0161 835 4100 or email us.
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