Confed calls for community IT

Community services lag behind much of the rest of the NHS on IT investment, according to the NHS Confederation’s Primary Care Trust Network.

The PCT Network, which represents the majority of PCTs in England, is calling for lack of IT investment to be corrected in a report published this week.

The report, The Future for Community Services, says community services have received little attention from policy makers “leaving them of variable quality and failing to deliver their full potential."

It looks at the changes facing community services, including the separation of the commissioning and provider roles of PCTs and the introduction of a Community Quality Framework.

It says PCT commissioners need to develop a detailed plan for transforming community services by 2009 and that in time many PCTs are expected to divest themselves of all or part of their provider services.

Options for community services include becoming a foundation trust, a social enterprise or integration with another NHS organisation.

PCTs are also expected to revise the payment system for community services, with a move away from block budgets towards other “currencies” such as capitation payments, payments per procedure or payments for a year of care.

The PCT Network report says the Department of Health has been working on common data definitions to help benchmarking and comparisons of performance and quality but that much work on pricing will have to be done locally.

It adds: “Community services have not had good data and this needs to change to support currencies. Lack of good data could undermine attempts to introduce currencies as they could lead to unsustainable pricing models which either underprice or overprice services.”

The Confederation said there was an urgent need for the agreement of national standardised quality indicators for community services and that while it welcomed the government’s planed changes it wanted to ensure that the focus was on improving care rather than on organisational form for its own sake.

David Stout, director of the PCT Network, added: “Policy makers have previously overlooked community services but we believe that such a substantial component of the health service requires a high level of attention.”

He said some of the organisational options for community services were not clear and called for clarification from the government ahead of October 2009 when organisational form will be considered by PCTs.

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