Overview

BestOutcome (PM3) and Clarity Consulting Associates Ltd are partnering to help our NHS clients migrate to the new Integrated Care System (ICS) structures. This can be a complex process and we are providing a common PPM technology platform (PM3) and programme/change management services (Clarity Consulting) to work with our clients to deliver a successful ICS transition.

What is an ICS?

Integrated care is about giving people the support they need, joined up across local councils, the NHS, and other partners. It removes traditional divisions between hospitals and family doctors, between physical and mental health, and between NHS and council services. In the past, these divisions have meant that too many people experienced disjointed care.

ICSs and Integrated Care Partnerships (ICPs) are new partnerships and organisations that meet health and care needs across an area, coordinate services, and plan collaboratively in a way that improves population health and reduces inequalities.

Since 2018, there has been a deepening relationship in many areas between the NHS, local councils, and other important strategic partners such as the voluntary, community, and social enterprise sector. They have developed better and more convenient services, invested in keeping people healthy and out of hospital, and have set shared priorities for the future.

How do ICSs operate?

As part of the NHS Long Term Plan, the following principles must be in place by April 2022 to make a consistent transition to system working, focussing on greater partnership working at place and closer collaboration between providers on a larger footprint. The main themes are:

Provider collaboratives
Place-based partnerships
Clinical and professional leadership
Governance and accountability
Financial framework
Data and digital
Regulation and oversight
How commissioning will change

How can we help?

Establishing an ICS will require a transformation programme to be led and managed. Moving to a new organisational structure will require careful change management. Clarity have worked to:

merge and closedown CCGs
develop and deliver the programmes of collaboration between providers
develop business cases for the resources required to support new ways of working and
developed the analytics to support a population health management approach to addressing the needs at place and ICS (system) level
supported service redesign to improve efficiency and effectiveness

All of these individual programmes and projects require a level of system collaboration, transparency and consistent support and drive from leadership which is unprecedented and requires an ICS-level PPM approach to be delivered successfully.

With Data and Digital being one of the eight key themes for ICSs, PM3 and BestOutcome can play a key role in supporting organisations to:

create effective local systems;
helping local partners in health and social work together;
helping to improve productivity and patient outcomes;
reduce bureaucracy;
drive service transformation; and
stimulate improvement and research.

According to section 2.51 of the NHS ‘Integrating care: Next steps to building strong and effective integrated care systems across England’ systems will need to:

(1) build smart digital and data foundations

(2) connect health and care services

(3) use digital and data to transform care

(4) put the citizen at the centre of their care

PM3 can support these criteria by enabling one integrated platform for all Project/Programme Management activities across the entire ICS. With a common platform bring consistency in practice, standardization of methodologies across ICSs, easy accessibility to key stakeholders, and visibility across the entire system.

Using PM3 will allow systems to procure PM3 under one shared contract, increasing resilience, digital operational services, and create efficiencies. With the functionality now to partition your system instance of PM3 into different areas support the ICS structure by allowing each organisation in the system to have their own individual Partition of the system. This will enable both the options to keep Programmes & Projects private or shared depending on what is required.

Summary

Clarity can provide the programme/change management and consulting experience and Bestoutcome can provide the PM3, PPM platform, to not only manage the ICS migration but also to become the ICS common project management platform.

For more information and how Clarity can help your ICS transformation, please contact us at:

https://bestoutcome.com/

https://www.ccal.co.uk/