Hospital bed-blocking ‘costs’ NHS England £900m a year – a headline echoed by many news outlets after an independent review earlier this year. Medically well patients can’t be discharged due to lack of care provision in the community, which then also puts pressure on other areas such as A and E – not being able to admit patients impacts their availability for new cases.
Anyone can see that this is a workflow issue between agencies.Would it make sense for this complete end to end workflow or process to be managed by a ‘single agency’? Would it work?
Alliance contracting is a type of partnership work where multiple organisations work together to achieve the shared goals whilst sharing risks and rewards.Within health and social care the commissioner and providers work as an integrated unit to deliver the service. With an equal say in decisions also comes a shared responsibility for patient safety, satisfaction and quality concerns.
Alliance contracting isn’t a new idea, but over the past three or so years it has certainly achieved more attention in the health and social care industry, especially since the changes to the structure, requirements and funding for the NHS and health care.
Although there is currently no published evidence of any longer term benefits or issues arising from alliance contracting but early signs are very positive. With an increasing spotlight on outcomes and performance indicators, structures are needed that can support this. There is also an obvious financial benefit to providing a service in this way which can’t be ignored.
Halo software is already providing for these changes with features that make it easy to work across several agencies with an open book policy on information and communications. A shared system for a shared goal, makes sense really.
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