PSSRU lead: Professor Gerald Wistow
The Whole Systems Integrated Care (WSIC) programme in North West London is a bold initiative that seeks to improve quality of care for a population of over two million people. It is one of 14 ‘pioneers’ launched by the Coalition Government in 2013 to remove barriers to integrated care.
Between February 2014 to late April 2015, the Nuffield Trust and the Personal Social Services Research Unit at LSE were commissioned to evaluate the programme’s early stages, providing an independent assessment of the initial processes and progress to date. The evaluation was formative in nature, providing feedback and challenge as part of the programme’s commitment to adaptive learning.
The Programme
In 2013, clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and local authorities from across North West London joined with health, social care and other partners to form an alliance intended to drive the development and implementation of a large-scale programme of integrated care. The Whole Systems Integrated Care (WSIC) programme covers the care needs of people in eight London boroughs: Brent, Ealing, Hammersmith and Fulham, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Kensington and Chelsea, and the City of Westminster.
This programme is the largest of the 14 integrated care pioneers launched by the Coalition Government in 2013 to remove barriers to integrated care and enable it to be extended ‘at scale and pace’.
Findings
The final evaluation report is now available.
The evaluation does not aim to draw a verdict on the success of integrated care and the impact on care services in North West London, but rather to assess and provide feedback on the approach to designing an integrated care programme.
The programme is ambitious and well-resourced through funding from the pooled budgets of the North West London Collaboration of CCGs. As a result, it has been able to make significant investments in co-design and planning, before developing pilot schemes, known as ‘early adopters’.
However, the programme was more than a year behind schedule when the evaluation ended and it had yet to deliver significant service change. The findings therefore reveal valuable lessons for other policy-makers and practitioners leading integrated care schemes, namely in the challenges of moving from planning and design to delivering service change.
Further information is set out in a blog about the study.
Documents
View the summary report (PDF)
View the full report (PDF)
Nuffield Trust’s webpage