Caring Together Primary Care Service Specification & Outcomes Mapping

5^th-16^th October

These past couple of weeks have been really busy for me so I have decided to combine the last 2 weeks together into one blog post!

Over the past few weeks I have been heavily involved in the mapping of the different outcomes around the new Primary Care Service Specification that is being developed as part of the Caring Together Programme, and the transformation of services for the population of Eastern Cheshire. I was tasked with the job of using the service specification and the overall outcomes for this to then map out the outcomes for each of the individual services that sit underneath these outcomes. Following on from the outcomes, the indicators and data that measure each of these outcomes are then defined. This then enables monitoring to take place of the outcomes to ensure that these are being met by the provider providing the service.  This has been a piece of work that I have taken a lot of time over and has been really interesting to work on as Outcomes Based Commissioning is still a fairly new concept for the CCG to adopt.

During the past couple of weeks I have been working on the Diabetes Integrated Care Service Specification with the project lead. I have been helping to put together graphics to insert into the specification and organising the layout by using the correct formatting. I have also helped to put together an appendices and just make sure that it is an easy to read document.

Also I have been working with my manager to draft together workstream maps for all of the projects currently being undertaken at the CCG and also the programmes of work that sit underneath the Caring Together Programme. We are mapping the strategic outcomes, to the lower level outcomes and then down to the indicators that measure the achievement of each outcome. Finally, I am then identifying how these outcomes meet the eight Caring Together ambitions that have been developed; Empowered Person, Easy Access, Appropriate Time in Hospital, Rapid Response, High Quality Care, Support for Carers, Planned Pathways and Integrated Care. This piece of work will be ongoing as more programmes develop over time, and it will be an easy to read visual tool for the user to identify which relevant outcome corresponds to which Caring Together ambition, rather than having to take the information from complicated spreadsheets.

Finally, over the past couple of weeks I have been helping to conduct some background research into a maternity review that my manager is currently looking into as part of the National Maternity Review that is due to take place within the next couple of months. I have been looking at service specifications for midwifery lead, consultant lead and community lead maternity services in order to see what other CCG’s are currently doing in regards to maternity services. This will identify to us whether we could adopt a similar approach at Eastern Cheshire CCG.  I have also been recognising areas of best practice using Care Quality Commission (CQC) reports for maternity and looking into these to see what areas we could adopt. Moreover, as a CCG for the majority of service specifications we are now writing, we are moving towards an outcome based commissioning approach so I was also looking into developing outcomes we could possibly measure the maternity services against in the future. 

Eastern Cheshire Health Fair 2015!

28^th September-2^nd October

On Wednesday 30^th September the first Eastern Cheshire Health Fair was held at Macclesfield Town Hall. It was an event that was open to everyone and it was a chance for people to see what local health and care organisations are doing to promote healthy lifestyles and access to services. The fair featured a market place of stalls with stallholders including Cheshire East Council, Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and The Caring Together programme to name but a few.  It was very well attended by members of the public and I believe the event was a great success through feedback received on the day from attendees. 

I was very heavily involved in the organisation of the Caring Together stall for the event, creating leaflets, organising a rota for the stall and setting up the stall on the day amongst other things.
After any event held by the CCG an evaluation form is given out to all the attendees to ask for their feedback on how well they feel the event was ran and any suggestions for further events that are held. I was tasked by the Communications and Engagement team at the CCG to create an online SmartSurvey for the Health Fair to send out to all that attended.    

Over the past couple of weeks I have been working with Katie, another placement student at the CCG, on an outcomes based commissioning approach for the CCG. This week we had a meeting with members of the commissioning, contracts and transformation teams to discuss the proposed process we had come up with. This was a very informative meeting for all members as it helped everyone to understand this new approach towards outcomes based commissioning and the process that the CCG could adopt in order to achieve this. It was then decided that this meeting will become a regular occurrence in order for everyone to keep up to date with the progress of this new approach to commissioning.

Towards the end of this week I had my three month review with my line manager. I cannot believe I have been on placement for three months already! The time has flown by! This meeting with my manager was really helpful for me as we discussed and identified my areas of strengths and areas for improvement. It was really nice to hear all the positive things that my manager had to say about me and that she was really pleased with all the work that I have completed so far. Also she identified some areas for improvement for my next review. These areas I had already identified myself such as improving my confidence! This is something that I really struggle with so this could still take some time to develop but I’m getting there! Also I need to take part in some training opportunities for effective minute taking skills which I will definitely sign myself up to do!