Every acute trust is facing three challenges: the elective care debt, urgent care recovery and an exhausted and depleted workforce. With Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) on the horizon, we have an opportunity to step back and look at the bigger picture to see where we can make system improvements to meet these challenges and add value to the patient, public and taxpayer.<\/p>\n
However, it is difficult to understand what is going on in any given health and care system. This is because the finance framework and metrics currently available are not defined or aligned enough to help determine the exact value (cost and outcome) of activity the funding is producing.<\/p>\n
Each ICS will be responsible for allocation of funding at system level. The aim is to distribute resources according to population need and to help reduce health inequalities. However, all payment systems are complex and to ensure the right calculations for payment of care and enable health systems to provide the right care in the right places, it is vital to have access to the right sources of data. Where patient-level data is limited, this can impact on how system budgets are allocated.<\/p>\n
Currently, trusts are operating with a mixed economy of block and activity contracts. Most of these are now block contracts since Covid-19 began, but there are also have large numbers of individual providers on specialist and general contracts, which makes it difficult to see the big picture. Specialist contracts, for example, can cover wide areas which makes it harder to pin down what is happening in each ICS. Operating with a variety of contracts like this can create significant challenges when trying to set out a whole system budget.<\/p>\n