ICB takes ‘novel’ approach to integrated community care

An integrated care board (ICB) is creating a new model of care via a consortium of partners, including primary care, to provide a comprehensive and joined-up service in an outcomes-based contract.

Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire (BSW) ICB is in the procurement process to create an integrated community-based care contract (ICBC) in which multiple partners work together to deliver agreed outcomes.

Sue Harriman, chief executive of BSW ICB, said it was a way of addressing the complexity of community services, which can be fragmented.

The aim is to bring together a group of partner organisations, which may include primary care, the voluntary sector, the enhanced care unit or hospice care, to work together in one contract.

All organisations would be equal partners in the consortium, which would deliver a defined set of outcomes.

Ms Harriman said: ‘It’s a novel approach in that it’s an outcomes-based contract.

‘The contract will bring together organisations that are starting to think and work differently, and we will support and enable them over the course of the contract to strive towards delivering these improved outcomes.’

The contract will be for seven years plus two, which Ms Harriman said reflected the ICBs recognition that the transformation would take time.

Ms Harriman acknowledged that it was ‘a very complicated piece of procurement’ and ‘a negotiated process’.

‘There are a number of stages where people come together, look at the outcomes, present their response to how they would deliver them, and we work with them in the procurement negotiation phase,’ she said.

She added: ‘It’s not thousands of pages of detailed specifications. Instead, it focuses on outcomes, based on a case for change around an ageing demographic, the drivers for cardiovascular disease, and so on.’

The ICB hopes to have awarded a contract by September with a start date of April 2025. 

The initiative is part of the integrated care partnership’s strategy to focus on early intervention and prevention.

Another priority for the ICB is primary care planning and making changes to services, said Ms Harriman.

‘We’ve started to think about those new models of care, and I hope we can get primary care to help us. There’s a real space for us to use the money differently – whether it’s service development or elective recovery – it allows us to move funds around in the right place to enable primary care to help,’ said Ms Harriman. 

She added that although the new primary care contract was controversial in relation to financial elements, it did offer greater flexibility, which was welcome.

A full interview with Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire ICB chief executive Sue Harriman is available here.