‘Doing the right thing’. Knowledge-Based Commissioning and the Right Care QIPP Agenda - are there implications for your own brand’s knowledge base?

Right Care is a new initiative and forms one of 13 national workstreams in the DH Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) programme, which dominates NHS thinking at the present time.  This workstream, however, is arguably not as front of mind as it needs to be with the pharma industry.  Unlike many other QIPP workstreams, which are typically more focused on improving transactions in the NHS, the Right Care agenda focuses specifically on transformation to improve value in the NHS by doing the right things . ‘Well,’ you may ask, ‘why does this need to be ‘front of mind’ for the pharma industry?”

Essentially, Right Care is an enabling programme.  It seeks to address variation, and in particular, unwarranted variation in the NHS, through the design and promotion of health investment and analysis tools such as the NHS Atlas of Variation.  These tools are intended to help the NHS to understand regional variation in health spend and outcomes through local pilots and by promoting knowledge transfer.  

For example, the workstream’s  focus on programme budgeting and its related discipline of marginal analysis offers a way to help commissioners reflect on their priorities and maximise value from spend by improving the allocation of resources.

So the big question is…are the activities of the Right Care agenda relevant to pharma companies?  Do we actually need to know all about this workstream’s plans and initiatives – and to research their implications – and will being a bit more clued up help to engage more effectively with the NHS? 

Here is a little food for thought…..

Have you considered how you may need to adapt your brand strategies given the initiatives around the principle of ‘shared decision-making’ and the planned roll-out of tools for use by Clinical Commissioning Groups?   For example, what are the implications of the introduction of Online Patient Decision Aids for communication between patients and healthcare professionals?   What do you need to investigate about the potential usage in clinical practice of these tools in order to ensure that your brand can effectively  leverage future opportunities?

On another note, how are PCTs in England using the NHS Atlas to identify and act upon unwarranted regional variations in the quality of care?   Could your organisation do more to support actions which need to be taken at local level as a result of commissioners identifying an issue?  If so, what type of support would be of most value?

Likewise, how might your company most effectively leverage the principle of “Do Once and Share”?

And what about the possibility that Right Care’s plans may lead to the creation of Clinical Leads for a Population within single care systems – perhaps there will be implications for your company’s future targeting activities?

These are just a few examples of why we believe that YES, Right Care should be front of mind for pharma business intelligence professionals, and why moving forward it needs to be a key focus for market research.  What insights do you need to be able to effectively support the workstream’s initiative, and thus in turn be able to more effectively engage with the NHS?

For more information on the Right Care QIPP Workstream, click on www.rightcare.nhs.uk

The NHS Atlas of Variation

The NHS Atlas of Variation discussed in the Right Care blog can be found on the link below - this interactive tool can play an important role in analysing the regional variation across key indicators in England. Using scale ratings, alphabetical sorting and search by key indicator we think you will find this a very useful source for some initial information into Right Care initiatives.

http://www.sepho.org.uk/extras/maps/NHSatlas/atlas.html

NICE Quality Standards – front of mind with BI Professionals?

...NICE Quality what?! Over the next 5 years, NICE plans to produce up to 150 “Quality Standards”.  These are intended to be a cornerstone of the new NHS Outcomes Framework, which sets out aims and objectives towards improving outcomes in the NHS and what this will mean for patients and healthcare professionals.  

Although not mandatory, the overriding goal of these NICE Quality Standards is to outline what “high quality health and social care looks like” in order to “create a comprehensive library of standards for all main pathways of care” - in summary, an information tool for patients/the public, clinical and other health and social care professionals, provider orginisations and Commissioners.

March was a significant month for the development of these standards with the publication of a whole tranche in Depression in Adults, Diabetes in Adults, Glaucoma and Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD).  This announcement follows the earlier Quality Standards in Stroke, Dementia, VTE and Specialist neo-natal care, launched in 2010.

Many others are currently in development and will be published during 2011 – these include standards in COPD (Imminent), Alcohol Dependence and Chronic Heart Failure (June 2011), Breast Cancer (August 2011), followed by End of Life care (November 2011). 

So what do these Quality Standards actually mean for Pharma?  Do we need to do anything around these new developments? Well here are a few ideas and pointers to think about…

Have you considered how you need to adopt your strategies to help customers to achieve the standards outlined in the Quality Standards documents?  

For example, are there implications for patient education programmes?   Could your organisation do more to support with information provision about the quality of care which patients can now expect to receive within a particular care pathway?  If so, what type of support would most be of value?

Also, could your brand team do more to use its best endeavours to reinforce what “quality really looks like” to healthcare professionals within your therapy area? If so, what would be the optimum way to do this?

Furthermore, have you considered those activities which your company could undertake to support NHS benchmarking of performance against evidence-based measures of best practice to identify opportunities for improvement? What support would be of most value and why?

These are just a few examples of the reasons why we believe that healthcare business intelligence professionals need to have the Quality Standards fully on their radar – and be thinking about potential opportunities created by the publication of the standards together with appropriate areas of investigation.

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NICE Quality Standards…..what’s the latest situation?

For more information on the NICE Quality Standards, click on the link below:

http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/qualitystandards/qualitystandards.jsp

GP-Led Pathfinder Consortia – Wait at Your Peril?

A total of 141 groups of GP practices have been selected to be the first to take on commissioning responsibilities as part of the Government’s plans to transform the NHS. 

Known as “pathfinders” and covering half the population across England, these groups’ main purpose is to test the new commissioning arrangements before more formal arrangements come into place.

Based on Adelphi’s recent insight-mining activities, we know that many Pathfinders are already very active and starting to engage with the commissioning agenda.  Starting to work together to decide their structures and priorities and also how best to carry out their functions, processes for the selection of medicines going forward are bound to be a key consideration. How will Consortia decide which drugs they will and will not prescribe in the future?  How will the interface actually work with secondary care.?  Will they operate with a local formulary – and what will they consider to be the requisite nature of medicines management support?

Furthermore, our experience tells us that many Pathfinders are also keen to team up with potential partners who can help them.   

Who better than pharma to support these shadow consortia?   Pharma has the know-how and resources to support these pioneering groups - and what is more, from the industry’s perspective this support may be essential if individual Consortia are to be persuaded of the overall value story associated with using a product - as opposed to simply focusing on it’s price tag.

These are just a few examples of the reasons why we believe the Pharma Industry can’t afford to sit back and wait for further clarity on the NHS re-organisation.  Early knowledge of how the environment is shaping up will be vital to the adaptation of marketing plans and the development of salesforce deployment strategies. We would suggest that those who respond the fastest are likely to benefit the most during this transitional period. 

Indeed, it is Adelphi’s experience that those companies at the sharp end of business intelligence already recognise the value in seeing how the government’s vision is starting to be translated on the ground.

GP Pathfinder Consortia...Where are they?

Want to know where to start with GP Pathfinder Consortia? Here is a map of all those set up so far, from the Department of Health....http://healthandcare.dh.gov.uk/gp-consortia-map/