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Practice Based Commissioning
Practice-based commissioning (PBC) is about giving clinicians the resources and support to become more involved in service development. GPs, nurses and other primary care professionals are in the best position to translate patient needs into redesigned services that deliver what local people want.
Key points
Funded by the UK Department of Health, the UKIF two year PBC development program helped with the rapid implementation of PBC across 70% of Primary Care Trust (PCT) areas nationwide. A second phase of the program began in April 2007, and offered every PCT and GP support around delivering the Government’s targets to reduce emergency admissions and ensure patients receive planned care within 18 weeks.
Achievements
Sites in the first wave of this program launched in January 2006 showed a 32% improvement in their initial assessment of their capability to implement PBC.
What is a PCT?
NHS primary care trust (PCT) provides primary care services and commissions secondary care services in England and Wales. They are public sector corporations headed by a board consisting of executive and non-executive directors, and chaired by a non-executive director. Collectively PCTs are responsible for spending around 80% of the total National Health Service budget. Primary Care Trusts are scheduled for abolition on 31 March 2013.
Last Updated 05 August 2011
What is the Model for Improvement?
The Model for Improvement provides a framework for developing, testing and implementing changes. It helps to break down a change effort into small, manageable chunks which are then tested to ensure that things are improving and that no effort is wasted. It is always worth remembering that while every improvement is certainly a change, every change is not an improvement.
The Model for Improvement consists of two equal parts; the first part, the “thinking part”, consists of three fundamental questions to guide improvement work:
- What are we trying to accomplish?
- How will we know that a change is an improvement?
- What changes can we make that will result in an improvement?
For more information about the Model for Improvement visit: http://apcc.org.au/about_the_APCC/the_model_for_improvement/
What is a Collaborative program?
A Collaborative is an improvement method that relies on the distribution and adaptation of existing knowledge to multiple settings, to achieve a common aim. Healthcare Collaboratives are built on a tried and tested method, developed in the USA , which has been applied to a wide range of management challenges. It was originally applied to healthcare systems by the Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in the USA, and has been adopted in other countries. A Collaborative is not a research project, a set of conferences or a passive exercise. A Collaborative is about actually doing and improving.
What is the Collaborative Methodology?
Adapted from the Institute of Healthcare Improvement’s Breakthrough Series Collaborative methodology, in the Australian context, the Collaborative methodology is used as a framework for the APCC Program. This methodology has been applied to a wide range of management challenges. Originally applied to healthcare systems in the USA, it has since been adopted in other countries, including the UK, Scotland, Canada and New Zealand.
The Collaborative methodology is proven to be highly effective in achieving large scale systems change and demonstrating measurable outcomes. It provides a generic quality improvement model that can be applied to achieve incremental, rapid and locally relevant improvements across a broad range of clinical and practice business issues.