Our highly experienced and clinically-led team offers a range of services to support commissioners. We ensure that provider contracts are delivered with optimum clinical, quality and safety standards, whilst simultaneously delivering the best possible value for money.
We provide a broad range of services including clinical quality and patient safety monitoring, contract performance monitoring, training for care providers and bid evaluation.
We bring:
- Robust systems and processes to effectively manage and monitor the quality and safety of your contracts, drawing on our experience of managing over 500 NHS Continuing Healthcare contracts. All contracts are assessed against factors such as contract value, risk, complaints, serious incidents / safeguarding, multi-agency engagement, location and performance.
- Access to our clinical experts to ensure patient needs are being met. Our senior and specialist nurses are skilled in many areas including tissue viability, infection prevention and control, dementia and challenging behaviour.
- The ‘Bravo’ portal – our bespoke system which encourages effective contract management, facilitates communication with providers and delivers a full audit trail of contract changes, suspension or performance notices.
- An established Service Escalation Panel (SEP), developed in partnership with local authorities across our customer base, which risk assesses poor performing providers and imposes the appropriate sanctions.
- Our unique, web-based care homes dashboard (founded upon NHS Standard Contract and CQC Inspection guidance) which enables care homes to report on a range of clinical indicators as well as highlighting bed availability. The dashboard provides vital local intelligence so that commissioning decisions are based on accurate evidence.
- A full complaints and comments handling service to ensure positive and negative feedback from patients and other organisations is appropriately shared and lessons learned.
Benefits:
Our approach is based on proactive provider management so that any issues are identified and addressed quickly, keeping your patients safe and your service compliant.
Drawing on both our in house clinical expertise and effective use of robust IT systems, we work with you to monitor and manage performance as well as identifying and implementing ways to proactively improve service delivery.
“I have been extremely impressed by the dedication of the clinical quality team ... I believe that patient and client experience has improved greatly as a result of the improved visibility of quality.”
Lynn Wilmott-Shepherd, Commissioning and Delivery Director, NHS Erewash Clinical Commissioning Group
RELEVANT READING
Find out more about our quality and clinical governance service by accessing the resources below.
Converting existing nurse competency frameworks into a Digital Paediatric Skills Passport
NHS Arden & GEM’s Clinical Support team was engaged by NHS England to provide programme management and strategic leadership to digitalise paediatric critical care competency frameworks.
Co-developing an integrated, system-wide frailty strategy in Lincolnshire
Sarah-Jane Mills from Lincolnshire Integrated Care Board and Roz Baker from NHS Arden & GEM CSU explain how they led development of an integrated frailty strategy to bring together disparate services and pathways that would improve quality and outcomes for Lincolnshire’s growing frail population in this article for Healthcare Leader.
Co-developing and implementing a frailty strategy for Lincolnshire Integrated Care System
Arden & GEM’s Clinical Support team worked closely with ICB colleagues to bring together a wide range of stakeholders from across health and social care to co-develop a frailty strategy for Lincolnshire.
Developing a harmonised Section 117 aftercare policy for Black Country Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Two experienced, registered mental health nurses from Arden & GEM’s Clinical Support team led a process of stakeholder engagement and policy development to put in place a harmonised Section 117 aftercare policy across the Black Country health and care system, which underpins clinical practice and ensures service users are offered access to support which meet their needs.
Specialist training for health and justice services on NHS continuing healthcare and fast-track referrals
Arden & GEM’s clinical support team was engaged to design and deliver a specialist training programme to provide prison healthcare staff with a clearer understanding of NHS continuing healthcare and increased knowledge of the decision-making processes.
Implementing a Population Health Management methodology across Lincolnshire Integrated Care System
Arden & GEM’s clinical support team has provided expertise and experience in project management, business management and clinical engagement to help the Lincolnshire ICS Population Health Management programme achieve its vision and goals, implementing a whole system approach to intelligence-led decision making.
Improving efficiency of the prior approval requests process through better use of Blueteq
NHS Lincolnshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) engaged NHS Arden & GEM’s Clinical Support team to undertake a project which would streamline their prior approval request process, improve visibility of requests and maintain ongoing assurance.
Improving reporting process efficiencies for the NHS England Midlands Region specialised commissioning pharmacy team
The NHS England Midlands Region specialised commissioning pharmacy team agreed a package of support with Arden & GEM that would see the CSU’s medicines optimisation team provide additional capacity and capability in invoice validation, drugs challenges, contract meetings and commissioning query response.
Accessing post-registration training: a regional survey
The findings from our pilot study, commissioned by Health Education England, to explore potential inconsistencies in training across different pharmacy sectors in the Midlands and East of England have been published in the Pharmaceutical Journal.
Understanding the complexity and acuity of a female acute mental health ward
When Lincolnshire Partnership Foundation NHS Trust wanted to better understand the complexity and acuity of its female acute mental health ward, Arden & GEM’s Clinical Support team was tasked with undertaking a ‘discovery’ project.
CONTACT US
If you’d like to find out more about quality and clinical governance, please contact us here: