NHS Personalised Care

What is Personalised Care?

Personalised care represents a new relationship between people, professionals and the system. It happens when we make the most of the expertise, capacity and potential of people, families and communities.

Personalised care means people have choice and control over the way their care is planned and delivered, based on ‘what matters’ to them and their individual strengths and needs. The NHS Long Term Plan published in January 2019 has a commitment to personalised care.

This short animation explains what personalised care means for people, professionals and the health and care system.

The Comprehensive Model of Personalised Care

People access personalised care through six key components or programmes and this model demonstrates how these come together to deliver an all age, whole population approach to personalised care.

Each component is defined by a standard set of practices, they are:

• Shared decision making which ensures that individuals are supported to make decisions that are right for them;
• Enabling choice, including legal rights to choice which is a collaborative process through which a clinician supports a patient to reach a decision about their treatment;
• Social prescribing and community-based support which gives people time, focusing on ‘what matters to me’ and takes a holistic approach to people’s health and wellbeing connecting people to community groups and statutory services for practical and emotional support;
• Personalised care and support planning which is key for people receiving health and social care services. It is an essential tool to integrate the person’s experience of all the services they access so they have one joined-up plan that covers their health and wellbeing needs;
• Supported self-management empowers people to manage their ongoing physical and mental health conditions themselves and the new roles of Social Prescribing Link Workers, Health & Wellbeing Coaches and Care Coordinators will support GPs and other primary care colleagues to do this;
• Personal health budgets (PHBs) which are an amount of money to support a person’s health and wellbeing needs.

Social Prescribing Link Workers, Care Coordinators and Health & Wellbeing Coaches

The Network Contract Directed Enhanced Service – Contract Specification 2021/22 – PCN Requirements and Entitlements provides reimbursement for three personalised care roles based in PCNs: social prescribing link workers, health and wellbeing coaches, and care coordinators.

Working together through a single point of access, these three roles reduce and support the workload of GPs and other staff by supporting people to take more control of their health and wellbeing and addressing wider detriments of health, such as poor housing, debt, stress and loneliness. As a result, people have improved lives, benefit from timely access to health services, and are supported to develop the skills and confidence to manage their own health and wellbeing.

These roles are intended to become an integral part of the core general practice throughout England, embedding personalised care within PCNs and supporting all professionals to take a personalised care approach. Supporting information on these three roles can be found in the Network Contract Directed Enhanced Service (DES) Guidance 2020/21.

Personalised Care Institute

Personalised care is everyone’s responsibility. The Personalised Care Institute was launched by the NHS in September 2020. The PCI accredits and provides online access to approved training for personalised care for all employees as well as accrediting training for the new roles of Social Prescribing Link Worker, Health & Wellbeing Coach or Care Coordinator.

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