Pulmonary rehabilitation guide – answering the questions that commissioners want answered

Pulmonary Rehabilitation

Produced by an expert task force of IMPRESS, this new guide on pulmonary rehabilitation services (PR) aims to answer the questions that most healthcare commissioners want answered. It supplements a Commissioning Pack for COPD due to be issued by the Department of Health England early in 2012. Providing clinical leadership to the NHS to stimulate [read the full story…]

Performance measures in health care: new report from RAND

shutterstock_87371735

An independent evaluation of the use of performance measures for accountability and quality improvement from RAND Corporation reports on how these are being used by a wide array of organizations in the USA. The availability of data from which to construct measures was the single most important factor cited as either facilitating or impeding their [read the full story…]

Health Survey for England 2010 focuses on respiratory health

shutterstock_48570847

If you incline to start presentations with a ‘killer’ statistic, then the annual Health Survey for England (HSE) is one for you. HSE monitors trends in the nation’s health, and progress towards selected health targets. It helps commissioners to have a better understanding of health issues and enables decision makers to shape policies to improve [read the full story…]

Breaking the mould without breaking the system: towards integrated 24/7 urgent care

Urgent or unplanned care consumes more than half the cost of the NHS, and represents about a third of the overall activity within it. This practical guide for commissioners builds on thinking emerging from reviews and innovative work by the Primary Care Foundation for the Department of Health over recent years.  Without proposing a blueprint [read the full story…]

NHS Operating Framework 2012/13: the new commissioning landscape

map of UK

The NHS Operating Framework 2012/13 focuses on the new commissioning landscape. It lays out the planning, performance and financial requirements for NHS organisations in 2012/13 and the basis on which they will be held to account. This brief overview simply picks out the headlines. Commissioners will want to get into the detail of this annual [read the full story…]

Value based clinical commissioning of elective surgical care: from low to high value?

shutterstock_61720402

This report on Phase 1 of work by the QIPP Right Care Team looks at emerging views of commissioners and surgeons on the issue of commissioning policies on “low value” procedures. The studies were commissioned by Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS medical director. Background Recent years have seen the emergence of several listings of procedures [read the full story…]

Shared Operating Model for PCT Clusters

Health reform

This sets out the processes and functions Primary Care Trust Clusters will need to perform and where it is important that there is consistency between Clusters. The report includes a month-by-month Guide of Shared Operating Model Milestones. High-level principles These principles run through the Model, including: Supporting the development of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs); developing [read the full story…]