Challenge
Wiltshire is a geographically large area but with a sparse population of approximately 450,000 residents. There are around 1,200 drug and alcohol users and the numbers of people known to treatment are almost 800.
They had to retender their case management system as well as their treatment and care services, so the decision on which one to do first was imperative.
Strategy
As part of the commissioning strategy, Wiltshire Council made the decision to ensure that an integrated case management system was implemented before the new services were tendered out. The decision to retender the case management system first was governed by various reasons:
- Wiltshire Council would have more control and ownership of the data, which would be held in one centralised system. As a result, it would make the transfer and migration of data between the old and the new services a more seamless and efficient process.
- The Council will be able to performance manage the services with real-time data, enabling them to make decisions on the current situation, and not on 3-months backdated information.
In 2011, LINKS CarePath scored the highest in all the areas involved in the competitive tender, thus was implemented across the whole of Wiltshire. It has proven to be an easy-to-use and user-friendly system, especially to all those keyworkers with different IT levels.
Wiltshire retendered for the new services in 2012. The need to retender the treatment providers was also two-fold:
- Previously there were four different service providers in the area, the Council’s main aim in this service redesign was to have one single integrated service provider to ensure and maintain continuity of care, reduce duplication and data redundancy and increase cost efficiencies.
- Secondly, the Council was legally bound to review their treatment providers as they were approaching the end of their agreement.
Results
At the end of the competitive tender in 2012, Turning Point was chosen as the sole treatment provider. Turning Point will be working in a new hub and spoke model and will promote an integrated partnership approach to the work, by providing a range of treatment and care services including prescribing, Criminal Justice and Harm Minimisation to the vulnerable clients in the area. Clients will no longer have to visit the different sites and different people; there will be open access for the clients also run from these hubs.
ILLY have been working with Turning Point for many years and both organisations are familiar with each other professional and structured approach. The collaborative working ensured a smooth data transition process and was kept in line with the required timescales.
The new service model in Wiltshire successfully went LIVE in April 2013.
Feedback
“The decision to implement a case management system before the retendering of the services was a strategic one. The Commissioners wanted to establish the Council as the data owners with full access to all the data enabling better real time performance management. This would also means a smoother transition of services as we would own the data. The transfer of information became much easier, giving us more flexibility in the retendering and implementation of the new model. In fact, it has been one of the easiest migrations in the area.”
(Eleanor Stirling, Joint Commissioning Manager for Substance Misuse, Wiltshire Council)
“The fact that ILLY Systems and Turning Point have been working together for a long time now was very beneficial, as this made the data migration process very smooth and ensured an efficient delivery of the new treatment model.”
(Lauren White, Commissioning Officer – Drug Treatment Coordinator, Wiltshire Council)