The NHS Commissioning Board Authority has set out its plan for a small number of national networks to improve health services for specific patient groups or conditions.
Called strategic clinical networks, these organisations will build on the success of network activity in the NHS which, over the last 10 years, has led to significant improvements in the delivery of patient care.
Strategic clinical networks, hosted and funded by the NHS Commissioning Board (NHS CB), will cover conditions or patient groups where improvements can be made through an integrated, whole system approach. These networks will help local commissioners of NHS care to reduce unwarranted variation in services and encourage innovation.
The conditions or patient groups chosen for the first strategic clinical networks are:
- Cancer
- Cardiovascular disease (including cardiac, stroke, diabetes and renal disease)
- Maternity and children’s services
- Mental health, dementia and neurological conditions
These networks will exist for up to five years and will be managed by 12 locally based support teams. These teams will build and oversee effective network arrangements for their area and help networks develop an annual programme of quality improvement in local services. The support teams, funded by the NHS CB, will be located in a local area team office.
Full details of strategic clinical networks can be read in The Way Forward – Strategic clinical networks published by the Board Authority and the supporting document The Way Forward – Frequently Asked Questions.
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On page 9 of the report ‘The Way Forward, strategic clinical networks’ I cannot understand why maternity and children have been placed in the recovery from injury and illness domain, can you provide the rationale for this please?
i.e.
Domain Strategic clinical network
Recovery from injury and illness – Maternity and children
Strategic clinical networks will support commissioners with their core purpose of quality improvement and the achievement of outcome ambitions for patients in the new system. Organising the work of the strategic clinical networks to Domains 1-3 of the NHS Outcomes Framework maintains alignment with outcomes and creates a sense of common purpose. Domain 4-5, patient safety and experience, will be embedded in the work of all the strategic clinical networks.
Aligning maternity and children to Domain 3 is not meant to imply a medical model of childbirth for example, rather it has been agreed that this strategic clinical network grouping best fits this Domain which focuses on episodic care.
I feel this is a real missed opportunity for people with a learning disability. With recent scandles such as Winterbourne and the six lives report still fresh in our minds, to have a clinical network ensuring legal innovative and cohesive practice ascross the NHS should in my view have been high on the agenda
There is nothing to stop professional groups coming together to share best practice and support professional development. In addition clinical commissioning groups may wish to establish and maintain networks (such as urgent care networks) to support local priorities and ways of working, and providers may use a network model to enable the joint delivery of a service such as pathology.
The strategic clinical network geographical support teams will be a source of expert advice for anyone wanting to establish a network. In addition this support team will be able to provide some basic resource, such as a meeting room, to enable informal professional networks to flourish in the new system.
We can expect the conditions and patient groups for which a strategic clinical network is prescribed will change over time in line with changing national priorities and as the improvement work of a specific network is concluded / mainstreamed.
I lead the Child Health Development Programme, hosted by a PCT in Cheshire and Merseyside, and established in 2005. We have fulfilled many of the roles and functions being assigned, now, to the “strategic clinical networks”. In our work over the past 7+ years we have covered all 11 standards of the NSF 2004, and more.
We are concerned that, in the dash to set up these new networks, too little time and attention will be paid to learning, and building, from an existing, long-established, highly-experienced network like us.
Please advise how we will be invited to contribute to this development, before wheels are re-invented and “intelligence” lost.
Regards,
Jonathan Smith.
It will be for the local health community to determine whether they want your network to continue and by funded from local resources from 2013, namely as a Local Clinical Network, or whether they wish the work to be mainstreamed or concluded. You will need to work with your PCT / emerging Local Area Team of the NHS Commissioning Board and clinical commissioners regarding your future. As part of these discussions they may ask you to prepare a legacy document, which could be handed over to the new strategic clinical network or other structures, in order that the important learning is transferred into the new system.
In the “Way Forward” document it says this:-
“The two directors will decide on the level of clinical input the
team will need and arrange this to be supplied from local clinicians and
professionals such as doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and scientists.
These roles will be mainly part time or session based.”
I currently work as a statistician in the Diabetic Eye Screening Programme and it appears that my work will be supplied from external sources. Where am I supposed to be employed in order to continue my work? I’m a specialist and this is not at all clear?
Also, I know a lot of scientists, having moved to the NHS from an academic institution. I don’t know of any scientists in academia or NHS who aren’t already fully employed for well over their contracted hours.
There will be strategic clinical networks for cancer; cardiovascular (including diabetes); maternity and children; mental health, dementia and neurological conditions in the new system, operating throughout the whole country. Strategic clinical networks will be non-statutory organisational models which bring together clinicians and organisations to improve pathways of care for patients. There will be 12 support teams, each working in a defined geographical area, supporting the work of these networks. These support teams will comprise a number of managers and clinicians who will provide leadership together with a range of expertise and skills to the service improvement activities of the strategic clinical networks. The clinicians that undertake sessions for the strategic clinical network support teams will need to apply for these posts, with agreement from their employing organisation that they can be released to under-take these part-time / sessional roles each week.
Many thanks for this response.
May I clarify further what the state of play is for staff who are currently employed in full time roles in cancer networks, rather than on secondment from other organisations.
Will these staff also need to apply for roles in the new support teams?, and is it envisaged that clinicians currently employed and providing services to networks at present, such as AHP Leads, Nurse Leads etc, will only be providing services on a part time/sessional basis in the new structure?
Hi Sally
Thank you for your comment. Published with The Way Forward is a Frequently Asked Questions document which included two questions regarding staff: question 8 ‘what are the implications of these changes for network staff?’ and question 9 ‘how will the workforce changes be progressed?’
Hopefully this may go some way to answer your question, and more information will be made available to those working in networks in due course.
Kind regards
Simon
Pleased to see that Dementia is included here. I do hope that the categorisation of this illness will receive some serious consideration, as those individuals who suffer from what is referred to as early onset dementia are in my opinion out of the loop! My husband was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers at 52 which means that he really did have this disease for perhaps a great deal longer, and certainly during the previous years whilst he was struggling to come to terms with the changes that were happening to him, memory loss etc. Recategorisation of the age groups is a must in order to meet the needs and provide the appropriate care and services for the very young with this totally destructive devastating disease. It’s a long journey from 52 to 65 which is the current category range ,and whilst I am not suggesting that 65 is old, I am saying that what my husbands needs were when he was forced to retire from his teaching job were not there. As his wife and carer for 8 years, I cannot even begin to explain the challenges and difficulties encountered. So much to do here, nothing out there! No understanding outside of a small range oh specialised health professionals. This should receive the highest priority, but of course that would be my opinion based on my years of dealing with dementia.
I am helping support an AHSN application and would like to engage with these networks. How can I find out when the SCN directors will be appointed in my area (SW) and who they are?
Hi Peter
Thank you for your comment, the details of the SCN director appointments will be announced on this website.
I’ll also send you an email once the SW area has been announced.
Kind regards
Simon
I am stunned and furious to see that Lung disease has not been included on the list of areas to be covered by SCNs! We have the second highest mortality rate in Europe for COPD, with an estimated extra 2000 needless deaths every year – that is 2000 people each year who would still be walking this earth had they had the standard of care that even Eastern European would give them. Shame on this Government and thisNHS if this is allowed to continue! Someone dies from COPD alone every twenty minutes of every hour of every day – and that is just one of the lung diseases. Remember that won’t you!
Hi Vanessa
Thank you for your comment, we appriciate you taking the time to get in touch. We understand your disappointment that the NHS Commissioning Board Authority (NHS CBA) is not proposing to establish a strategic clinical network for lung disease at this time. However, there is inevitably a limit to the resources available to support strategic clinical networks, and there are a number of conditions or patient groups who, taking into account the criteria published by the NHS CBA in The Way Forward: Strategic clinical networks, are able to make a valid case for a network to help drive improvements in outcomes for patients.
The NHS CBA has made it clear that, as priorities change or the work of one of the initial strategic clinical networks concludes, the Board will identify new conditions or patient groups that would benefit from a strategic clinical network approach.
The fact that the NHS CBA is not proposing to establish a strategic clinical network for lung disease at this time does not mean that the Board does not attach priority to improving outcomes for respiratory patients.
In her update of 5 October (HR Update 3) Jo-Anne Wass said “our detailed organisational design has now been finalised. This shows every post in our structure. We have shared the full organisation design widely and will be posting it on our website very shortly.”. I cannot find this on your website, and the design I have for the Chief Operating Officers Directorate, which includes Clinical Networks, does not have all the jobs on I am told. Couold you signpost me to where this details and the jobs are or clarify please?
Thank you
Jonathan Miller, Network Director, Peninsula Cancer Network
Hi Jonathan
Thank you for your comment. The NHS CB directorate structures are due to be published on the NHS CB website imminently, so will be publically available then.
Kind regards
Simon