It is widely acknowledged that care provided by the NHS and other services should be person-centred – that is, centred on the individual and responsive to their needs. One way of achieving this is through a better understanding of the patient’s experience of care and a PenCLAHRC project has been the first to put together a guide for commissioners on this topic.
The new guide was compiled by PenCLAHRC researchers and patient-centred coordinated care experts based at Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, with support from NHS England, the Coalition for Collaborative Care, and the South West Academic Health Science Network (SW AHSN).
The guide is an invaluable resource not only for commissioners and service providers – who can use it to help measure the effectiveness of services, support their continuous development and ensure the inclusion of person-centred coordinated care in its principles – but also for patients and their support networks, who can use it to support and challenge the delivery of local care services.
Until the launch of ‘Measures for Person Centred Coordinated Care’ (MP3C) last year, tools that measure patients experiences of care had been dissipated and complicated to access, making it difficult for commissioners of care services to find the tools they needed to improve, individualise and evaluate packages of care. MP3C brought together all the existing tools into the first comprehensive compendium for commissioners, health managers and researchers.
This latest work, supported by NHS England, is an accompanying guide for MP3C entitled ‘How to Use Metrics, Measures and Insights to Commission Person Centred Coordinated Care’. It provides a framework for the use of measurement tools to develop care services for patients with long-term conditions, and those at the end of life that are better tailored to their needs.
The work was led by Dr Helen Lloyd, Senior Research Fellow at PenCLAHRC. She commented:
“Person-centred coordinated care has become the gold standard for the development of existing and new care services, and for the patients covered by the guide it is of particular importance and relevance. The availability of the guide to commissioners means that they now have what they need to know in order to commission person-centred coordinated care in an easily searchable format.”
The guide is now available to download.
You can find out more about the innovative work of the project on the P3C project page.