Integrated Care Systems & Sustainable Transformation Partnerships

NECS is a well-established national supplier of care transformation support, backed up by a range of delivery
partners that share our values and commitment to quality. We are proud to have developed a customer-owned
model based on social enterprise principles, a model of ownership and gain-share prospectively open to future
customers who are interested in a long term relationship with NECS.

Our understanding of how good ICS/STPs operate to achieve change across multiple boundaries and levels
has been developed through importing innovation and learning from strategic partners, the Canterbury District
Health Board in New Zealand and Streamliners. Our offer is based on driving forward the Triple Aim (or quadruple aim – improving the work life of health care providers including clinicians and staff) converting data and information into
intelligence that drives change, combining it with our suite of population health and demand management
tools, enabled by NHS grounded experience and ethically aligned expert partners.

NECS has developed a robust approach to understanding system requirements, constantly referring to the ethos of
the Triple Aim, designing collaborative and transformative  solutions through:

• Assessment of system maturity particularly in relation to senior leadership and ownership of a common, binding
  vision; identification of the target populations
• Defining the system’s aims and measures
• Undertaking diagnostics to determine the gap to be closed

We then develop a programme approach to enable system-level change, rapidly testing and scaling up successful innovations/new care models tailored to address local need and circumstances. We have developed an approach that ensures we are able to understand the whole system requirements to enable us to agree a plan to deliver objectives shown to the right.

Our methodology is tailored to each ICS/STP, flexed according to their requirements and focused on the priority areas for highest impact. This has delivered strong results and improvements across the northern region.
Examples of this include:

The Cumbria and North East Regional Development Unit coordinates resources and impact assessments, manages the portfolio of programmes (work streams), tracks and manages benefits including efficiency savings, maps interdependencies between each work stream. The Unit provides assurance through ensuring the delivery of programmes, managing risk at a programme and portfolio level, and provides constructive challenge to work stream leads.

NECS is currently piloting a population health management (PHM) diagnostic with a pilot ICS to enable the system to understand their current PHM system maturity and support a development plan. In addition we have developed PHM reporting in our RAIDR Business Intelligence system which will enable the system to use the intelligence gathered to provide valuable place based population information to support system decision making.

Our partnership with Canterbury District Health Board and Streamliners

The ICS approach been successfully introduced in other countries to meet the ever increasing demand for health
and social care services, and get a better return on investment whilst improving outcomes for patients. Building upon an existing relationship developed over a period of years, NECS has entered into a formal partnership arrangement with one of the most successful of these systems – Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB), New Zealand and its strategic partner,
Streamliners New Zealand Limited (SNZ). CDHB is responsible for planning, organising, purchasing and providing health and care services for the most highly populated region of New Zealand’s South Island.

Canterbury has demonstrated a sustained improvement in their health outcomes and service utilisation data across a range of measures. Their approach to integration along with a commitment to whole systems working which adopts a ‘one system, one budget’ approach has transformed a system in crisis to a world leader of integrated care.
The aim of the partnership is to share the knowledge and learning from Canterbury, gained through their ten year journey. We will work collaboratively to support organisations that are committed to improving the effectiveness of health and social care services through collaboration, integration and patient-centred design.

Our partnership has already delivered significant improvements within the South Tyneside partnership through the introduction of an alliancing approach and the implementation of HealthPathways – an online manual used by clinicians, delivering standardisation and joint working across primary and secondary care. This work is delivering improvements across the system including a reduced reliance on acute specialist services.

This success will be utilised to offer new emerging systems with a programme of support to inform their
own integration journey. As the delivery partner of CDHB and SNZ within England, NECS will combine its own experience of delivering end-to-end commissioning support with the learning from our Canterbury partners to deliver a comprehensive programme of support including:

• System diagnostic assessment
• System leadership
• Population health management
• Risk stratification and predictive modelling
• HealthPathways

Our established ways of working with Canterbury will enable an efficient mobilisation of the above programme of support, combining significant NHS transformation experience with world leading best practice.

How we’ve helped

NECS already supports system-wide working applying national and international best practice to underpin our approach and support population-based decision making and transformation. Our Regional Delivery Programme has successfully aligned 14 cohesive work streams across more than 20 NHS organisations in the North East and North Cumbria.

Within this NECS has supported STPs with a number shared work programmes, including the Urgent and Emergency Care Network vanguard, regional QIPP, medicines optimisation programmes, and joint commissioning arrangements for ambulance services. The partnership with Canterbury will enhance our existing knowledge base further and ensure we continue to develop the best service offering for our customers.

“for us in South Tyneside CCG, we have always viewed people from NECS as an integral part of our system. We already have excellent relationships with our local partners, and since the Canterbury system first began working with us, NECS have been part of that experience. The technical support for the programme has been excellent, but also the understanding of the wider context and underpinning principles that have been critical to the success of this work so far. This whole system working, which recognises the interdependencies we all have with one another, is what is required. We hope that others will benefit from the approach that has been adopted in Canterbury New Zealand, via South Tyneside and NECS.” David Hambleton,Chief Executive South Tyneside CCG.

Download our Integrated Care Systems & Sustainable Transformation Partnerships offer