Guidance for metrics to improve patient care
People with long term conditions, multiple long term conditions and those at the end of life could see their care better tailored to their needs, as the first openly-available comprehensive resource of measures relating to patient experience and person centred care is published in a single guide for commissioners.
Not only is the new guide invaluable to commissioners, it is also useful for providers of services (who can use it to help measure the effectiveness of services, support their continuous development and ensure the inclusion of person centred coordinated care in its principles) and patients and their support networks (who can use it to support and challenge the delivery of local care services and understand the role they can play within the commissioner/provider/patient partnership).
Until the launch of 'Measures for Person Centred Coordinated Care' (MP3C) last year, tools that measure patients experiences of care had been dissipated and complicated to access, making it difficult for commissioners of care services to find the tools they needed to improve, individualise and evaluate packages of care.
MP3C brought together all the existing tools into the first comprehensive compendium for commissioners, health managers, researchers.
The latest work supported by NHS England, is an accompanying guide for MP3C entitled "How to Use Metrics, Measures and Insights to Commission Person Centred Coordinated Care".
It provides a framework for the use of measurement tools to develop care services for patients with long term and multiple long term conditions, and those at the end of life.
The project was led by Dr Helen Lloyd from the University of Plymouth, who is also a National Institute for Health Research Collaboration for Applied Health Research and Care South West Peninsula (NIHR PenCLAHRC) Senior Research Fellow.
She commented: "Person centred coordinated care has become the gold standard for the development of existing and new care services, and for the patients covered by the guide it is of particular importance and relevance. The availability of the guide to commissioners means that they now have what they need to know in order to commission person centred coordinated care in an easily searchable format."
The new guide was compiled by researchers and patient centred coordinated care experts from Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, with support from NHS England, the Coalition for Collaborative Care, NIHR PenCLAHRC and the South West Academic Health Science Network.
