Consultant's catch-up
Greetings again from the frozen North - where the weather has been only one of the challenges facing the Implementation Consultants team during January!
For the time being, I am covering even more miles and even more visits than usual, as I am looking after the North West on behalf of Jenny Lewis whilst she is on maternity leave, as well as my own patch in the North East. Visits in January have been mainly to Directors of Commissioning, and to those NHS organisations that we haven't seen so far this year.
It will take us until the end of March to meet most of the PCT commissioners, but even after only the first month of this campaign we are getting some interesting feedback. We have discovered a wide variety of approaches to commissioning itself, and many ways in which NICE guidance is being used to inform and strengthen the process. As commissioning gains a higher profile in the NHS, and as PCTs move towards becoming 'commissioning organisations' many can see the benefit of integrating NICE guidance into their quality management processes - right through from needs assessment, to contracts, procurement and performance management. Every PCT is at a different stage in developing its commissioning structures and processes, and we are encouraging those with well developed ideas to contribute these to our shared learning database on the NICE website.
As Val mentioned last month, we are now preparing for our visits between April and October to Health Overview and Scrutiny Committees and Directors of Children's Services in local authorities, and to heads of maternity services in acute trusts, where we hope to get a feel for what it is like handling NICE guidance at the very front line of the NHS. Later in the year the focus will change again - to include mental health and PCTs.
There have been some changes to our support team this month. As they moved across to their new office base in Manchester, we were very sad to lose the support of our coordinator, Liza Marie Turner. Liza's work has been invaluable in planning our work and getting us all to the right place at the right time - we will miss her sadly, but we are glad that she is staying in the Implementation Directorate, and moving on to work with the costing team. We are delighted to have continuing support from Helen Crosbie, and we welcome our new administrator, Penny Barber, to the team.
To contact your local Implementation consultant please email the field team at fieldteam@nice.org.uk.
