Technical provider selcted for new pilot programme

The Health Foundation is pleased to announce that PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have been selected as the technical provider to develop tools to assist in allocation of healthcare resources.

These tools will enable new clinical commissioning groups in England, and health boards elsewhere in the UK, to effectively involve patients and the community in local priority setting.

The team are developing a training module for decision conferencing facilitation, together with a toolkit for data analysis to support value for money analysis by commissioners when prioritising resource allocation.  

The work builds on techniques developed at the London School of Economics (LSE), by a team led by Gwyn Bevan. The LSE team developed a socio-technical approach to help health services to try to improve value through commissioning decisions.

The LSE team tested the approach successfully with NHS Isle of Wight and NHS Sheffield, running priority setting workshops using decision conferencing in conjunction with data analysis. These workshops equally involved commissioners, providers and service users. 

Helen Crisp, Assistant Director of Research and Development at the Health Foundation said, ‘Deciding where to allocate resources is a critical process for the NHS. Commissioners and planners need to prioritise to make the most of limited resources. Maximising health improvement and reducing health inequalities will become all the more demanding with tighter finances.

She continued, ‘We are delighted that our research funding has resulted in this practical application, which will allow decisions about allocating resources to be made in ways that are evidence based, transparent and systematic.’

The Health Foundation PwC and the LSE are currently recruiting interested commissioning groups to input into the development and pilot test the tools and training module, which will help to produce the final ‘products’.

The training package and data analysis tools will be available to the health service across the UK to assist in the involvement of all stakeholders, including patients and the public, in deciding the priorities when making decisions on allocation of resources from commissioning budgets.

The LSE research has been reported through our summary publication ‘Commissioning with the community’ (published 2010), together with a number of LSE working papers and articles in peer reviewed journals.