Drug Action Teams
Back to Joint commissioningDeveloping a model for effective local joint commissioning
The Department of Health reports on joint commissioning (1995) suggest that:
Joint commissioning should be seen as a) a strategic activity for agencies to share and discuss their overall perspectives and strategies and b) a more detailed problem-solving tool for tackling specific difficulties.
Experience indicates that initial activity in this field is often driven by the desire to solve specific problems, but areas that have built up a workable strategic approach to the subject have delivered more creative results. When considering a joint commissioning process, it' helpful to analyse current and predicted pressures, as well as opportunities.
The variation between approaches often centres on how an area handles the complex concept of needs analysis. At its most sophisticated, needs analysis could involve:
- a detailed study of the nature of the problem to be addressed
- a review or audit of aspects of the delivery systems currently in place (including costing these deliveries)
- consideration of other pressures or priorities of all the elements in the system
- thorough market research on the direct and indirect -customer' of the services
This can then lead to an informed strategy which balances, as far as possible, the requirements of all aspects of the service and offers a platform on which to base future developments.
The other extreme would be a mechanism designed simply to respond to a current or impending crisis in service delivery, such as:
- an influx of referrals to a service from a new source
- a desire to operate a more cohesive prevention strategy for young people
- the need for multi-agency training
- an imperative to match the demography of people benefiting from a service with that of the local community
A joint commissioning approach could clearly help to relieve these pressures, but in this context would be operating only as an ad hoc problem-solving tool. Pragmatically, the solution is often a combination of the two extremes but this should not be the decision of any single agency.
