NHS England 25 September 2015
- Acute care collaborations are the third wave of the New Care models proposed by the Five year Forward View and will develop new arrangements between hospitals for sharing staff, services and resources to improve the quality of care provided to patients, the clinical viability of smaller hospitals, and the productivity of each participating hospital.
- They will test three approaches:
- Excellently-performing individual NHS hospitals able to form NHS Foundation Groups to raise standards across a chain of hospitals (a model of hospital ‘chains’ frequently used in other countries).
- Individual clinical services at local District General Hospitals being run on site by specialists from regional centres of excellence where a smaller trust draws in expertise from larger and surrounding trusts through a mixture of both networking and franchises.
- Forming ‘accountable clinical networks’ integrating care across District General Hospitals and teaching hospitals for key services, including cancer and mental health.
- The 13 vanguards are
- Multihospital chains
- Salford and Wigan Foundation Chain
- Northumbria Foundation Group
- Royal Free London
- Multisite specialty franchises
- Dartford and Gravesham (small District General Hospital making use of specialty franchises)
- Moorfields (Ophthalmology)
- National Orthopaedic Alliance (Orthopaedics)
- The Neuro Network (The Walton, Liverpool) (Neurology and spinal specialty)
- Accountable clinical networks
- MERIT (Birmingham and Solihull) (Mental Health Accountable Clinical Network);
- Cheshire and Merseyside Women’s and Children Services (Maternity and Paediatrics Accountable Clinical Network);
- Royal Marsden, Manchester Cancer and UCLH (Cancer)
- East Midlands Radiology Consortium (Radiology)
- Developing ‘One NHS’ in Dorset (Multispecialty)
- Working Together Partnership (South Yorkshire, North Derbyshire and Mid Yorkshire) (multispecialty)
