Appendix 1. Better Allocation for Better Health and Healthcare: The First Annual Population Value Review Better Allocation for Better Health and Healthcare: The First Annual Population Value Review Peter Brambleby, Andrew Jackson and J. A. Muir Gray Foreword by: Duncan Selbie, Commissioning Director NHS National Knowledge Service Commissioning Directorate Department of Health 1 Contents Foreword Programme Budgeting for commissioners: in brief What is the aim of commissioning? What is the aim of the annual population value review? Why have an annual population value review? How can we improve healthcare locally through the annual population value review? How do I conduct an annual population value review? What is the right answer? What will be the outcome of this annual population value review? Section 1: Taking the plunge into Programme Budgeting and Marginal Analysis What is Programme Budgeting and Marginal Analysis (PBMA)? What data and resources are available to undertake Programme Budgeting? Data on expenditure Data on outcomes How is the information collected? What do I do now? Additional resources to support commissioners Section 2: What tasks do I need to do for the general assessment of the whole budget? Proformas 2.1 and 2.2 Section 3: What tasks do I need to do for the specific assessment of a programme budget for a single disease category? Section 4: The future What further information will be available to increase the usefulness of Programme Budgeting? More detailed programme and sub-programme financial data More reliable data More outcome and output data Marginal analysis Further reading 2 Annex 1: Background to Programme Budgeting What is the National Programme Budgeting Project? Why is Programme Budgeting important now? What is the history of Programme Budgeting? When was Programme Budgeting introduced into the NHS? The National Programme Budget Project Board What are the benefits of Programme Budgeting for the NHS? What are the advantages of Programme Budgeting to individual NHS organisations? How will Programme Budgeting be used in the long term? Annex 2: The Annual Review of Evidence, Process, Outcomes and the Configuration of the 50 major health problems (EPOC) Programme 3 Foreword Dear Colleagues, Welcome to the first Annual Population Value Review. One of the core functions of commissioners is resource allocation to different population groups based on an analysis of need. Excellent work has been done by the Programme Budgeting Team within the Department of Health, and clear information about spend on each patient group can now be provided for each PCT. In the first instance, this will raise questions about the accuracy of the data, however, this will improve with use. Before the start of the next financial year (2007-2008), each primary care trust (PCT) might want to reflect upon the distribution of resources among the different groups and how the distribution compares with the distribution of other commissioners, particularly commissioners who are serving populations that have a similar socio-economic profile. Some of you will already be experienced in the technique of Programme Budgeting, but for those of you who are not we have been fortunate in obtaining the skill and experience of both Peter Brambleby, lately Director of Public Health at Norwich PCT, and Andrew Jackson from the DH Finance Directorate to help promote and disseminate this work. For those to whom this technique is new, the main objective this year is to reflect upon the distribution of resources across and within programme categories, and to identify areas that would reward further investigation and analysis. For those who have already carried out programme budgeting before, data can offer the opportunity for more detailed analysis and action. It is our intention to produce guidance on marginal analysis at a later date. For many of you, this will be of most use during the second annual value population review, which will be based on 2006-07 data available from November 2007. Throughout 2007, more detailed work on individual programme budgets relating to disease groups and then specific conditions within each disease group will take place as part of the work for the National Knowledge weeks, introduced by the National Knowledge Service with the focus on individual conditions. I commend this work to you and look forward to seeing its impact on the ground. Duncan Selbie Commissioning Director 4 Programme Budgeting for commissioners: in brief Over the last year, there has been an acceleration of the commissioning function in the NHS. In July 2006, the Department of Health published the Commissioning Framework for Hospital Services and the complementary Commissioning Framework for Health and Well-being was published in December 2006. In November 2006, Richard Douglas wrote to the NHS explaining that data on programme budgets and outcomes was available to commissioners. What is the aim of commissioning? When commissioning health services, the aim is to maximise value for the population served from the resources invested on the population’s behalf. This can be done in two ways: directly and indirectly. The commissioner can maximise value directly by allocating the resources they control among the patient and population groups within the population to best effect. The resources can be invested with specific health objectives, as follows: • to reduce health inequalities and improve equity; • to promote and improve the health of the population; • to improve the value and quality of healthcare. Value derived from investment in healthcare is maximised when it is impossible to reallocate resources from one patient or population group to another to achieve more benefit or less harm. This is sometimes referred to as allocative efficiency, a task increasingly shared with local authorities as service providers. The commissioner can maximise value indirectly by using their contracting power to help providers of health services improve the quality and safety of the healthcare they provide while minimising its cost. This is sometimes referred to as technical efficiency. What is the aim of the annual population value review? The aim of the annual population value review is to improve healthcare for the local people for whom the commissioner is responsible by clarifying the allocation decisions that have been made, both explicitly and implicitly. In order to do this we need to initiate NHS learning from expenditure and outcomes data that will enable us to improve the planning and delivery of services based on need rather than traditional patterns of investment. 5 Why have an annual population value review? The annual population value review for 2007 will be the first in a series. The first annual population value review will give commissioners an opportunity to reflect on the distribution of resources among different programmes according to the programme classification developed by the Department of Health from the International Classification of Diseases version 10 (ICD10) Classification. It will also enable commissioners in newly created primary care trusts (PCTs) to reflect on the pattern of investment in health services that they have inherited following the recent re-organisation. The second Annual Population Value Review will be launched in December 2007. However, it will be preceded by training opportunities to improve commissioners’ skills in marginal analysis How can we improve healthcare locally through the annual population value review? The first steps that need to be taken before we can improve healthcare locally are to identify: • the distribution of resources between different population groups; • how the amount invested in each major health category compares with those for the national average; • how the amount invested in each major health category compares with the amounts invested by the commissioners serving populations that have a similar socio-economic profile. This gives us the foundation from which we can assess the appropriateness and effectiveness of these investments in terms of the health outcomes achieved for the local population. How do I conduct an annual population value review? The first phase in conducting an annual population value review is to compile a summary of expenditure in the programme budget categories. Having done this, circulate the data widely with appropriate explanations and possible reasons for high and low levels of spending. The audience for this information should include: • patient forums; • practice-based commissioners; • clinicians in hospital and community settings; • specialist commissioning groups; • local authority personnel, especially those responsible for local area agreements (LAAs); • local strategic partnerships; 6 • overview and scrutiny committees; • local media. What is the right answer? “There is no right answer for this one.” Richard Gleave As commissioners have to match local need to local resources, the situation for each PCT will be different for each population in England. However, it is essential that commissioners are aware of any variations in expenditure, and are able to explain the reasons for outliers on particular programmes of spend, and have a plan to bring them into line if there is no plausible explanation for the variation seen. What will be the outcome of this annual population value review? For the first year, the main outcomes will be: • a better understanding among the newly created commissioners of the distribution of resources they have inherited; • stimulation of discussions on each programme’s position with respect to PCTs serving similar populations; • identification of opportunities to improve health and healthcare locally; • initiation of discussions with local authorities on matching health needs and investment in health services for the local population. Topics for discussion about individual programme budgets could include: • programme objectives; • programme budgets (“inputs”); • programme activities (“outputs”); • programme achievements (“outcomes”). Ultimately, the focus of discussion for the Annual Population Value Review is the redeployment of resources to achieve better value outcomes to meet objectives. Information that can be used to support detailed discussion about individual programmes will be provided during the National Knowledge Weeks, which are being organised as part of the EPOC Programme (see Annex 2). The focus of the National Knowledge Weeks will be the principal health issues within each programme budget, providing: • up-to-date evidence about relevant health problems; • detailed information about prescribing and hospital utilisation trends and variations. Given the recent innovation of programme data collection, there may be variation in the data. If there is lack of confidence in the financial estimate for a programme budget, the discussion should still go ahead but be framed in terms of: 7 • admissions to hospital; • prescriptions; • staff; • beds and bed-days; • theatre sessions; • similar tangible resources. If nothing else, discuss programme objectives, such as meeting un-met needs and tackling inequalities. 8 Section 1: Taking the plunge into Programme Budgeting and Marginal Analysis (PBMA) What is Programme Budgeting and Marginal Analysis (PBMA)? Programme budgeting is a technique that enables personnel in a health service, and those who use the health service, to identify how much money has been invested in major health programmes, with a view to influencing future investment. Marginal analysis is an economic appraisal technique that evaluates incremental changes in costs and benefits when resources in programmes are increased, decreased or deployed in different ways. PBMA can be used within programmes of care or across services and programmes within a health organisation. The technique provides users with the capacity to identify: • Where resources are currently being invested; • The level of effectiveness of those investments; • The most effective way of investing in health services in future in relation to the needs of the population for which services are being commissioned. Programme budgeting provides a rich source of information that will enable managers and clinicians to work together to improve healthcare for the local population (see box below). Although the best way to use the information generated by programme budgeting is through a structured analytical technique particularly marginal analysis, information on programme budgets can be used by anyone – it is not necessary to have skills in economic appraisal. Delivery of efficient (and in the case of the NHS, equitable) health care requires doctors to take responsibility for resources and to consider the needs of populations while managers need to become more outcome and patient centred. …programme budgeting and marginal analysis has the potential to align the goals of doctors and managers and create common ground between them. Ruta et al. (2005)1 1 Ruta, D., Mitton, C., Bate, A. et al. (2005) Programme budgeting and marginal analysis: bridging the divide between doctors and managers. British Medical Journal 330: 1501-1503. 9
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