New guides to transform community services
Six guides were launched today by Health Minister Lord Ara Darzi to support the NHS in delivering the highest quality healthcare services within the community.
The Transformational Guides for Community Services – ‘Ambition, Action, Achievement!’- will support NHS practitioners and clinical leaders in transforming services locally, providing local staff with the information and tools they need to modernise and improve services in their community. The Guides focus on six key areas:
- health, well-being and reducing inequalities,
- acute care closer to home,
- people with long-term conditions,
- rehabilitation services,
- services for children, young people and families; and
- end of life care.
These Guides, developed with community practitioners, support the ambitions of the Next Stage Review – High Quality Care for All – that the NHS will focus on delivering high quality personalised health services for patients as close to home as possible.
The Guides will also help commissioners to understand community services better and managers to identify areas where improvements can be made. The Guides contain a number of best practice examples, which have been shown to vastly improve patients’ experience of community health care. For example, by ensuring that staff working in end of life care are trained in discussing with patients and their carers and families the choices they can make, and by using proven high quality care pathways to ensure effective, appropriate care and support.
A Quality Framework Guidance for Community Services published alongside the Guides, will help measure and improve the quality of community services provided. The Guidance includes more than 70 proposed quality indicators which will be tested over the coming months. These range from improvements in health outcomes and perceived quality of life to how long wounds take to heal, and waiting times to access services. They cover aspects of effectiveness, safety and patient experience across a wide range of community services.
The work that is now underway to assess the proposed indicators set out in the Quality Framework for Community Services will help to ensure that we can ‘measure what we value’ in terms of the quality of services we provide for patients. We can then move forward and use these good practice examples across the wider NHS.
Health Minister, Lord Ara Darzi, said: “Patients have told us that whenever it is safe, they prefer to be treated close to home. The six Transformational Guides for Community Services I am launching today will give front line NHS staff all the information they need to help them change the way care is delivered to patients.
“The Guides will firmly put quality at the heart of community services, introducing new, innovative ways of working, and fundamentally improving people’s experience of being treated in the community.”
Managing Director of Provider Services, NHS Calderdale, Gaynor Connor said:
“We are delighted that Lord Darzi has chosen to launch the guides in Calderdale. I believe this is in recognition of our innovative approach in transforming community services. The transformational guides will provide an excellent resource in improving community services across the country.
“The Department of Health has also asked the National Leadership Council to prioritise investment for leadership and staff development in community services, and encouraging PCTs to give a high priority to the provision of information technology for front-line staff.
“The Department also confirmed it would run a second round of its successful Leadership and Innovation Fund awards to provide funding for NHS community staff who want to design and try out innovative ideas for improving local services.”
Notes to Editors - The Transformational Guides and Quality Framework for community services are part of the Department of Health’s Transforming Community Services programme which aims to improve community services so that they can provide modern, personalised and responsive care of a consistently high standard.
- The six Transformational Guides for Community Services – ‘Ambition, Action, Achievement!’ – support the ambitions of the Next Stage Review – High Quality Care for All, published by the Department of Health in June 2008. The Guides can be found at: http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Healthcare/Primarycare/TCS/index.htm
- The launch of the Guides took place in NHS Calderdale which was recently awarded one of the Department of Health’s Transforming Community Services programme Innovation Awards for work around its Innovation Council ideas programme. It is hoped work already begun can be further developed and new initiatives put into place to further enhance community-based services for patients in the Calderdale region.
- In January 2009, £1.5 million new funding for Innovation and Leadership was awarded to support front-line community clinical teams to develop innovative ways of improving services. The 30 awards made by Strategic Health Authorities to teams throughout the country will be evaluated and the best practice widely shared. For more information on the Innovation Awards, please go: http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Healthcare/Primarycare/TCS/InnovationandLeadershipfund/index.htm
For further information, please contact the Department of Health press office: 020 7210 5221.
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