How is someone's care pathway decided?
When someone is referred to our services (
generally through the GP) we will undertake an
initial assessment, and based on their clinical presentation and individual needs we will decide on an appropriate care cluster for the person - this will then determine their pathway of care.
People are clustered into 1 of a possible 21 clusters, which quickly identifies the predicted set of interventions and package of care that person is likely to need. Clustering usually takes place at the beginning of a period of treatment and at points of significant change in need.
Clustering people in this way is new procedure and is a national initiative. It's primarily designed to help health commissioners determine the correct payment to be made to health care providers, for providing care and treatment to people, based on their individual health needs. This is known as 'Payment by Results'(PbR). PbR already happens in acute care hospitals and is due to be introduced in mental health care in the near future. Payment tariffs for mental health care are likely to be set nationally.
People with the same diagnosis often have very different needs and we want our care pathways to reflect the individual needs of the people we see, rather than be led by diagnosis alone. In designing our care pathways we have also made a deliberate attempt to integrate all the services that may need to join together to meet the persons care needs (mental health. social care, voluntary/third sector and primary health care).
We have colour coded the different agencies within the care pathways for the benefit of all the parties, this will make it clearer who is involved in a person's care. They will be as follows;
- Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust - blue
- Mental health social care team - green
- Voluntary/third sector agencies - orange
- Primary health care - red