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Commissioning LTC Self Care Education for Patients

“STAYWELL”

Commissioning LTC Self Care Education for Patients.
Aiming to Reduce GP Workload and Hospital Admissions

Special offer to NAPC Members

Intouch with Health has 10 years experience of helping NHS Trusts to communicate with patients and the general public. Their latest managed service, “Staywell”, is focused on improving patient self care and has already been implemented by a number of primary care organisations around the UK.

Staywell is BOTH a system to support health professionals in educating patients about better self-care, AND a means for willing patients to educate themselves. The aim is to empower patients, improve quality of life, reduce complications and avoid admissions.

Staywell comprises:-
• A survey for patients to complete which helps identify their knowledge gaps
• Relevant information and advice, national and local, to plug specific gaps
• Reports showing the health team which patients have the greatest education needs, and precisely what each of those patients needs to learn.

Including those already launched and those nearing completion, the Staywell range covers:-
COPD
Asthma
Diabetes
Angina
Hypertension
Heart Failure
Heart Attack and Stroke Prevention
Heart Attack (after you’ve had one)
Stroke (after you’ve had one)
Atrial Fibrillation
Anticoagulation
Medication Compliance
Health of the Elderly

A PCT or PBC consortium licensing a single Staywell would normally pay the equivalent of £300 per practice per annum (ex VAT), with discounts for taking more than one.
NAPC members and affiliates will be offered an extra 10% discount off these rates.

One emergency admission avoided per practice per year will more than pay for Staywell.

For more information, including early evidence of the effect of patient self-care education on admissions reduction, please contact:-

Paul Blackburn, CEO, Intouch with Health Ltd. Telephone: 01285 657516 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Lord Warner Sets Out Blueprint for PBC

New plans to boost the number of GP practices directly commissioning health services were published today by Health Minister Lord Warner.

He launched new guidance on practice based commissioning (PBC), where GPs and other frontline professionals receive an indicative budget from their Primary Care Trust (PCT) to commission services on behalf of their patients and local communities. This guidance has been prepared in consultation with expert opinion including NHS Alliance, National Association of Primary Care, the Improvement Foundation and the NHS Primary Care Contracting Team.

The blueprint sets out clear guidance for Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) to ensure that more practices are able to take forward PBC with maximum support and minimum bureaucracy.

The guidance outlines:

reduced bureaucracy around business cases and tendering, making it easier for practices to develop new services, and making it easier for them to work in consortia;
more financial freedom ? practices will be able to take on a larger budget covering an increased scope of services, and practice budgets will be moved to represent more of a 'fair share' of PCT resources; and, strengthened local incentive schemes ?
to encourage more practices to engage in PBC and give practices a direct income ? linked to national priorities such as the 18 weeks maximum wait.

Lord Warner said:

"Practice based commissioning is central to the new NHS. Greater clinical engagement in commissioning means better services for patients and better use of resources. When done well, PBC will also help waiting lists and achieve financial balance.

"PBC gives clinicians the information, levers and incentives to improve services in response to the needs of their patients and local communities and bring care closer to home.

"The latest uptake figures show that 85 per cent of PCTs are achieving universal coverage, and that we're on track to achieve universal coverage by the end of the year. 84 per cent of practices are taking up incentives, up from 81 per cent last month.

"We need now to ensure that practice based commissioning is quickly embedded in the everyday life of the NHS. We've listened to clinicians and expert opinion, and reflected the views in this guidance on establishing PBC as part of daily life in practices. The new guidance I'm publishing today aims to get clinicians firmly in the driving seat on re-shaping services and setting over the obligations on PCTs to help advance this."

Practice Based Commissioning: practical implementation - what does this mean for practices?

Do download a copy of the full document click on following link:
www.dh.gov.uk/practicebasedcommissioning

Practice Based Commissioning

NAPC will be supporting the implementation programme for Practice Based Commissioning. However, it will be raising with the Department of Health significant issues which still need to be resolved. These include:

The necessity for devolving the total budget for all clinical services to practice level.
The need for accurate data validated at the practice.
The essential level of management allowances to enable the practices to manage the process.
The opportunity for practices to group together on a voluntary basis as opposed to imposed locality arrangements.

NAPC Chairman, Dr James Kingsland, said ‘the Department of Health document signals an acceleration in the implementation programme for Practice Based Commissioning and the resulting re-configuration of Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities. It sets out a framework to improve efficiency in NHS resource usage to enhance patient choice leading to a more patient centred NHS. My organisation fully supports this programme’

***ENDS***

Contact:
Dr James Kingsland - 07887 894 124
Dr Rhidian Morris – 07774 143 681
Dr Howard Freeman – 020 8946 5899
Dr Derek Hopper – 01472 350 327

Private company to take over NHS drug budgets

Response to Campaign Organisation Press Release
Private company to take over NHS drug budgets

Many NAPC member practices are already working together in groups of their own volition to address issues around the cost and quality of prescribing. Resources released from their endeavors are used to support the work necessary to bring about the required prescribing changes, the development of additional patient services or the financial position of PCTs.

Medicines management is an area that lends itself well to development through PBC and can potentially cover:

The development of patient pathways to support prescribing quality and costs
Support for prescribers in the decisions that they make
Working jointly with community pharmacists to maximise their contribution
Working more closely with patients in taking increasing responsibility for their use of medicines

Whilst Practice Based Commissioners may require support to enable them to manage this aspect of their commissioning budget many of our members have managed this without having to pay such a large financial price and at a relatively low risk of not achieving the required savings.

The real and present danger with the Assura scheme is that isolating an area of financial control at PBC level on which the greatest personal financial gain might result opens up the whole profession to the charge of profiteering at the expense of the provision of patient services.