Why the Provider Collaborative?
In August 2021, national policy entitled “Working together at scale: Guidance on Provider Collaboratives” was published which set out a requirement for:
All trusts providing acute and mental health services are expected to be part of one or more provider collaboratives by April 2022.
In short, it outlined that Provider Collaboratives are partnership arrangements involving at least two trusts working at scale across multiple places, with a shared purpose and effective decision-making arrangements.
The primary focus of the Provider Collaboratives centres around the following three priority areas:
- To reduce unwarranted variation and inequality in health outcomes, access to services and experience
- To improve resilience by, for example, providing mutual aid
- To ensure that specialisation and consolidation occur where this will provide better outcomes and value
To further aid their development, supplementary guidance was released in February 2022 in the form of a Provider Collaboratives Toolkit which outlined a range of ideas, tools, and case studies to help with setting up a provider collaborative or to help strengthen existing collaboratives.
The Black Country Provider Collaborative is one of three provider collaboratives (PCs) and four ‘Place Based Partnerships’ (PBPs) that form the wider Integrated Care System (ICS) in the Black Country.
We are continuing to work with our ICS colleagues in developing an operating model which facilitates and encourages better integration for delivery at ‘place’.