Moving on from Carr-Hill?

Moving on from Carr-Hill? Planning for sustainability and transformation?

Busy with patients all through December? Maybe even trying to squeeze in the occasional nativity play? So, you might well have missed the highlights from the December NHS England Board meeting (NHS England Board meeting 17 December 2015).

This heralds a couple of key publications to watch out for in general practice as we move into the New Year:-

New, place based allocations for general practice
Details of a proposal to move away from the Carr Hill contracting formula (based on 1999-2002 data) for primary medical care will be published early January 2016.

The key change proposed is the inclusion of new estimates of stratified workload per patient for GPs – based on 2 million patient records from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink, 2014.

“The key impacts of the changes are to reveal an increase in the relative need for primary medical care in London and to reduce the range of the most extreme relative needs in the model” (Board paper 4, Strategy for Allocations to Support Delivery of the Five Year Forward View in 2016-17).

Planning by place for local populations – in pursuit of the Triple Aim

NHS Planning Guidance, 2016/17-2020/21 , will be published shortly. The call is for System Leadership and “the intention is to signal, unambiguously, that the primacy of planning by individual institutions should increasingly be supplemented by planning by place for local populations.” (Board paper 5, Mandate, NHS Planning Guidance and CCG Assessment Framework)

The guidance asks for two distinct, yet interconnected plans together focused on the Triple Aim of better health, transformed quality of care delivery, and sustainable finances.

1. A 5-year “Sustainability and Transformation Plan” (STP) for local health and care system

2. A plan by organisation for 2016/17, to reflect the emerging strategic plan

NHS England proposes to use these two plans “as the basis of assessing the phased access to national transformation funding for example for spread of new care models, enhanced access to General Practice and technology.”

Workforce planning and development is an essential element of planning for sustainability and transformation. Working across Thames Valley, we want to work with you to ensure that the workforce of today and tomorrow has the right numbers, skills, values and behaviours, at the right time and in the right place.

Sue Lacey Bryant
Workforce Development Tutor