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Media Archive 2007

Year of Care pilots

We are looking for applications from PCTs, Diabetes Networks or Consortia of Practice Based Commissioners who would like to pilot the Year of Care for diabetes.

What is Year of Care?

The Year of Care for diabetes project is a partnership between Diabetes UK, the Department of Health and the NHS National Diabetes Support Team.

Year of Care describes all the planned care that a person with Diabetes should expect to receive (usually over a year), including self management support. The project is about empowering people through greater choice and involvement, enhancing self-management, and improving health outcomes.

The idea is to use the annual review discussion, developing it from a ‘tick box’ exercise of measuring biomedical variables to a ‘care planning’ discussion. This means giving people more time to consider information, more options for care and support for self-management and helping them think through and jointly decide with their healthcare professional on the right options for them. The plan they arrive at will form the basis of their individual Year of Care.

To make this work, the right service and support options will need to be in place locally. This means commissioning in a more systematic way, starting with a real understanding of what local people need and want. The project will explore how commissioners link the individual choices people make to commissioning at population level, and what the challenges are. It will also look at how NHS reform policy can support better care for people with diabetes and what challenges it poses.

Applying to become a Year of Care pilot

We plan to pilot Year of Care in three local areas in England. The pilot sites will test the feasibility of using the Year of Care approach across a local population and explore how the Year of Care approach to designing, delivering and commissioning services can be developed.

Applications will be accepted from PCTs, Diabetes Networks or consortia of Practice-Based Commissioners. The deadline for applications is Friday 6th July. More details and an application pack are available online at www.diabetes.org.uk/yearofcare. Queries and questions should be addressed to Kathy Wilson at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

A Time for Cultural Change

There are three keys factors governing the development of Practice Based Commissioning (PBC), namely the culture of individual Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), the quality of clinical leadership and having the right tools to make it happen.

Whilst there is a growing number of success stories relating to the implementation of Practice Based Commissioning, a recent national review by the Department of Health has identified a number of barriers that remain preventing its ‘universal coverage’ in Primary Care.
Practical experiences on the ground show that some PCTs need to improve their analytical skills to support practice based commissioners. Mutual accountability between general practice and PCTs needs to be improved, and PCTs need to receive feedback from their General Practices in a similar way to how you might obtain 360 degree comments during a workplace appraisal.

Practice Based Commissioning must not be viewed as a tick box exercise and at the early stages of this new financial year, this policy is at a very important juncture. What is clear is that Practice Based Commissioning flourishes where PCTs provide appropriate support and falters where PCT enthusiasm, particularly at Chief Executive level, is low.

Purchase/Provider Split

Following the publication last week of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) plan to close the purchaser-provider divide, the National Association of Primary Care (NAPC) said it deplored any attempts to influence a move away from the purchaser/provider split, both in the National Health Service (NHS) and in the Department of Health.

‘The evidence of the past’, Dr James Kingsland, Chairman of NAPC commented, ‘does not support the case for the British Medical Association’s (BMA) proposal’. ‘Indeed’, Dr Kingsland continued, ‘the BMA should be supporting and encouraging both GPs and Consultants to take ownership of commissioning services for the NHS. The reality is likely to be that if Practice Based Commissioning (PBC) fails, then we shall see a more commissioning by non NHS organisations, with less general practice influence’.

Dr Rhidian Morris, a long-standing member of NAPC’s Executive Committee and former President and Chairman, reported: ‘By 1990 the NHS was in a truly shocking state with clinicians not accepting responsibility for the NHS, and managers powerless to make improvements. I am saddened to see the BMA once again taking this tack. The proposal in our view should be unacceptable to present Ministers and to the opposition’.

ABPI Code Of Practice - Pharmaceutical representatives

In this edition, find out about pharmaceutical representatives and the requirements of the ABPI Code…

The promotion of prescription medicines to health professionals and information made available to the public about prescription only medicines are regulated by The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) Code of Practice for the Pharmaceutical Industry.

It is important that you know about the ABPI Code so that you know what to expect from pharmaceutical companies and how to get the most out of your relationships with them.

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