The Year of Care is about improving care for people with long term conditions in the NHS.
It sets out to learn how routine care can be redesigned and commissioned to provide a personalised approach, including support for self-management, for people with long term conditions.
The Year of Care approach puts people with long term conditions firmly in the driving seat of their care and supports them to self-manage.
It does this firstly by making routine consultations between clinicians and people with long term conditions truly collaborative, through care planning, and then ensures that the local services people need to support this are identified and made available, through commissioning.
To achieve the best outcomes, both effective care planning and commissioning have to be in place and working together.
Each individual will have different priorities and goals, often leading to actions they can take themselves. They may also choose how these will be supported from a wide range of differing service and support options (micro-level commissioning). Many commissioners are already providing a range of self care support services to build on.
The challenge is to link each individual’s needs and goals, choices and service use into the commissioning decisions that take place at a population level (macro-level commissioning). If this can be achieved, services can be planned based on the genuine needs of individuals.