Involving Patients in Commissioning

Jane Sully
National Development Officer- Health
Age Concern England

June 21st 2006

Background:

• Community Health Councils
• Commission for Patient Involvement in Health
• PPI Forums
• New arrangements on the horizon
• Commissioning a patient led NHS
• Practice Based Commissioning

What Is Commissioning?

• No Common Definition
  • Commissioning is the process of securing and managing appropriate healthcare services for relevant populations at value for money for taxpayers. In its purest form, it is composed of three phases:
  • Understanding and segmenting the needs of local communities and individual patients and planning accordingly
    Defining services to meet these and contracting them from the most appropriate providers
  • Monitoring provision and managing providers, to continuously improve outcomes for patients and local communities

Outcomes Of Effective Commissioning

The key outcomes of good commissioning might be summarised as:

• Improving health outcomes;
• Promoting a mix of services, in and out of hospital, that are appropriate to the scale and nature of the needs of the local community;
• Including patients, the public and all interested parties including, in particular, Local Authority partners, the voluntary sector and, when appropriate, the private sector;
• Providing services that comply with the core standards and are improving in line with the developmental standards;
• Offering value for money.
  

Why Involve Patients?

• Policy Developments around Patient Voice
• Healthcare Commission Ratings
• Practice Based Commissioning - service redesign/ demand management
• Learn from Patient experience
• Improved Self Care
• Monitoring Quality-continuous improvement

Approaches

• Not tokenistic consultation at the end of the process
• Choice is not Voice
• Target key groups
• Work through existing community structures
• Learn about your communities – not just statistics
• Location, Location, Location

How Do we Learn From the Experience of Ordinary People Like Me?

last updated 23/06/06