Year of Care project
| To receive a regular update on the Year of Care project or if you have any queries, please email James Thomas on yearofcare@diabetes.org.uk |
The first question the Year of Care project will consider is the feasibility of using care-planning and commissioning to make the system work around individuals and their needs.
We’ve recruited three local NHS teams as pilot sites to look at what needs to happen to make Year of Care a reality across their populations. They will focus on developing the infrastructure to support care planning in routine practice, including training clinicians in consultation skills. They will also look at how to commission the right services for individuals. This will involve:
- Working with people to understand what services they need, particularly support for self-management.
- Developing healthcare providers to provide that support.
- Linking individual people’s preferences expressed in care-planning consultations into population level commissioning.
- Understanding what services and support cost.
This initial work will happen over the period September 2007 to April 2008. Delivery of Year of Care to people with diabetes will begin in the pilot sites in April 2008.
Pilot sites
Most of these issues are very new and with local commissioning increasingly recognised as the route to improve services there’s lots of interest. Over 40 NHS areas expressed interest in being a pilot and 23 applied.
To select three pilots we shortlisted six organisations for visits. We were struck by their tremendous commitment and passion, with chief executives, commissioners, managers, clinicians and people with diabetes rearranging diaries to spend a day talking about Year of Care.
Some told us they’d found the application process really valuable as the first chance they’d had to get together and think about shaping the commissioning of services around individuals in this way.
The pilots we selected are Calderdale and Kirklees, North Tyneside and Tower Hamlets.