South West CCG introduces system-wide CQUIN plan

South Devon and Torbay CCG will introduce a commissioning for quality and innovation regime requiring all six providers on its patch to take on more responsibility for the achievement of objectives across six mutually agreed themes.

The six CQUIN schemes are:

• improve patient experience;
• improve staff experience;
• improve incident investigation;
• reduce self-harm and suicide;
• reduce domestic violence and abuse; and
• improve nutrition and hydration in care settings.

The providers involved in the initiative are South Devon Healthcare Foundation Trust; Torbay and Southern Devon Health and Care Trust; South West Ambulance Service Foundation Trust; Devon Partnership Trust Community Care Trust, a third sector provider of NHS services; and the privately run Mount Stuart Hospital, which will sign up to the schemes relevant to its NHS patients.

While the commissioners will retain overall responsibility for tracking the performance of each provider against their CQUIN milestones, each provider will be expected to “lead” on one of the schemes and encourage and “corral” their neighbours to meet its objectives.

It has yet to be decided who the lead provider will be for each scheme.

Individual providers will then be responsible for reporting progress on the relevant measures to the CCG.

Gill Gant, South Devon and Torbay CCG’s director of quality, said: “If you have one particular CQUIN scheme being led by provider A, that provider will come to present the evidence across all six providers to the CCG.

“Taking a lead on that means they won’t have responsibility for the finance feature of their colleague providers, but they will have responsibility for the presentation of the evidence.

“Their job is actually corralling, encouraging and networking with the others - which is vital.”

Each of the six CQUIN priorities will be embedded into all of the providers’ contracts from April, following agreement on the relevant milestones.

A CCG spokeswoman said: “Whilst there will be a number of shared milestones and goals for each CQUIN, it is recognised that each provider will need some more targeted milestones to address variation in provider performance by focusing on areas where there is scope for individual improvement.”

Ms Gant added: “We can’t expect providers to police each other, but what we are trying to encourage is a sense of integration and working together.”

The South Devon and Torbay system was named as one of the Department of Health’s 14 integration “pioneer” sites in 2013.