NHS Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is celebrating the announcement by Care and Support Minister, Norman Lamb that it has been awarded Integrated Care Pioneer status.

The announcement, made yesterday at a special event to promote the innovation and integration in health and care commended the CCG’s and its partners’ work and ambitious plans to deliver person-centred, coordinated care and support.

The award comes after a rigorous process and shortlisting by a panel of UK and international experts who selected only the most innovative and committed localities to become pioneers that aim to support health and social care services to work together, provide better support at home and earlier treatment in the community to prevent people needing emergency care in hospital or care homes.

Fiona Bell, Deputy Chief Operating Officer and Innovation Lead at NHS Vale of York CCG, said: “In our collaboration with partners, we aim to provide a health and social care system that is truly seamless; one that embraces innovation and which allows teams to work together to deliver high quality care.

“To overcome the local, complex landscape which includes three local authorities, Acute Trust and Primary Care partners we are working together to integrate services through the development of a ‘Care Hub’ approach. A number of schemes currently operating at the pilot stage are responsible for assessing, diagnosing and delivering care to enable individuals to remain at home or return there as early as possible following ill-health or crisis. Initially they will focus on the frail elderly and those with Long Term Conditions, but will ultimately expand to cover the Vale of York area for the whole population.”

Dr Mark Hayes, the CCG’s Chief Clinical Officer, said: “The local community has told us that they “only want to tell their story once” and want to see more “care co-ordination”, so I am absolutely thrilled at today’s announcement which gives us a real opportunity to help improve the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in our society.”

Three separate pilot projects in the Vale of York are testing approaches in different areas to deliver proactive, community-centred care for populations of around 50,000 to 100,000.  The schemes are currently testing alternative ways of combining and integrating the resources of the public sector, independent sector and community assets to deliver joined-up care and improved outcomes for the population they serve whilst developing approaches to share data and care plans.

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