A new integrated personal commissioning (IPC) scheme will see patients with compex needs tailor their own mixture of NHS and community care.
NHS England, local councils and other voluntary sector organisations will team up to offer people the ability to control their own health and social care support.
According to chief executive of NHS England, Simon Stevens, four groups of patients with complex health conditions have been highlighted as potential targets for the IPC programme, which is set to begin April 2015. These are:
A new integrated personal commissioning (IPC) scheme will see patients with compex needs tailor their own mixture of NHS and community care.
NHS England, local councils and other voluntary sector organisations will team up to offer people the ability to control their own health and social care support.
According to chief executive of NHS England, Simon Stevens, four groups of patients with complex health conditions have been highlighted as potential targets for the IPC programme, which is set to begin April 2015. These are:
– Patients with long-term conditions, including frail elderly people at risk of care home admission.
– People with learning disabilities.
– Those with severe and enduring mental health problems.
– Children with complex needs.
Councils and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) may also decide upon additional groups to include in the programme.
Local authorities and third sector organisations will be commissioned locally to support personal care planning and give advice to those entered into the programme.
Stevens underlined the importance of giving patients the option to manage their own choices.
He said: “We need to stop treating people as a collection of health problems or treatments. We need to treat to them as individuals whose needs and preferences should be seen in the round and whose choices shape services, not the other way round.”
Funds contributed by councils. CCGs and NHS England will go towards an "endowment," shaped depending upon the individual’s annual treatment needs, meaning all services provided will remain free at the point of use.
High-needs patients entered into the IPC programme will be given the power to decide upon how personal control to accept with regards to how services are commissioned for them.
By the end of July 2014 an IPC prospectus will be released, with NHS England working with local government, CCGs, patient groups and voluntary sector to produce this.
Previous pilots have shown that this kind of provision has the prospect to join –up services and funding for patients requiring multiple services.
It gives people the freedom to call upon services and support when they need it most, as patients’ conditions can improve and worsen over the course of many years, therefore reducing the probability of unnecessary appointments and hospital admissions.
Stevens said: “That’s the big offer the NHS increasingly has to make to our fellow citizens, to local authorities, and to voluntary organisations. We need a double N in ‘NHS’ – a National Health Service offering more Neighbourhood health support.”
The IPC programme builds upon the work on:
– The ground-breaking Better Care Fund
– The “year of care” NHS commissioning
– The personal budge in “continuing care”
– The early experience of “integrated care pioneers”
The NHS will provide technical support for projects and fund independent evaluation of these programmes, with wider scale successful projects thought to be rolled out from 2016/17.
