NHS All Age Continuing Health Care 2.0 Consultation

Overview

Background

The All Age Continuing Care (AACC) Programme within NHS England covers the following forms of continuing care for children, young people, and adults:

Adults

• NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC)
• NHS-funded Nursing Care (FNC)
• Joint Funded Individual Packages of care (JF)

Children

• Children and Young People's Continuing Care (CYP)

The AACC vision is for individuals and families to have improved experience, transparency and fairness across all forms of Continuing Care including a smooth transition between services and resource provision.

All Age Continuing Care (AACC) is an umbrella term covering different types of continuing care however the Policy Frameworks for ‘children and young people’, and adults are distinct and separate.

The ‘National Framework for Continuing Healthcare and NHS Funded Nursing Care’ can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-framework-for-nhs-continuing-healthcare-and-nhs-funded-nursing-care

The ‘Children and Young People’s Continuing Care National Framework’ can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/children-and-young-peoples-continuing-care-national-framework

AACC Data Set v2.0 and its Scope

• Both Joint Funded Individual Packages of care (JF) and Children and Young People's Continuing Care (CYP) have seen significant increases in spend in recent years. Also, PHB packages, a key aspect of personalisation, is also relevant to both JF and CYP.
• Unlike Adults CHC and FNC, which have had long standing data collections and publication, no corresponding activity data has been available for JF or CYP.
• Whilst policies and even legislation may be separate for CYP, delivery of these services is often from the same teams.
• JF is an additional funding type to fall out of the CHC assessment process (along with FNC) but for which there is a gap in data.
• One of the aims and aspirations of Version 2.0 of the data set is therefore to expand the scope to also include CYP & JF.
• Once implemented, v 2.0 will be known as the NHS AACCDS (All Age Continuing Care Data Set) and will encompass the following commissioned services:

Adults

• • NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC)
  • NHS-funded Nursing Care (FNC)
  • Joint Funded Individual Packages of care (JF)

Children

• • Children and Young People's Continuing Care (CYP)
• As a secondary uses data set, the NHS AACC data set intends to re-use operational data for purposes other than direct patient care. It defines the data items, definitions and associated value sets extracted or derived from information systems and sent to NHS England for analysis purposes.

How the NHS CHC data set is used

The NHS CHC information captured within the data set supports the national aims to deliver:

1. Better outcomes,
2. Better experience and
3. Better use of resources, by providing detailed evidence that is currently unavailable.

The NHS AACC data set will demonstrate:

• where patients are being placed out of area
• where care packages are being changed frequently
• other evidence which may indicate poor outcomes for the patient, allowing this to be identified and addressed.

The data set allows monitoring of patients going through local appeals processes to ensure these are resolved quickly and will highlight ICBs where high numbers of eligibility decisions are being overturned on appeal.

Implementing this data set

NHS AACC data set v2.0 should be implemented by all ICBs commissioning NHS-funded CHC services in England. All data providers MUST be able to collect the information as defined in the Technical Output Specification.

Why your views matter

As part of the application to obtain approval from the Data Alliance Partnership Board*, we are asking for feedback on our proposals for NHS AACC v2.0.

Engagement activity has already taken place, but we are asking any interested parties to participate and provide feedback before the final revision of v2.0 is produced. Consultation feedback will be reported back to the DAPB before publication of an Information Standards Notice (ISN) is agreed.

This consultation runs until 30 June 2023 and we are looking to submit our application to the May meeting of the DAPB, with ISN publication in August.

The following documents are available in draft format to support you in considering the consultation questions. We would recommend you review these before embarking on answering the questions in this survey.

• Draft Change Specification
• Draft Technical Output Specification (TOS)

These are available to view under the Related documents header below.

NHS ALL AGE Continuing HealthCare

More information about AACC can be found on our website here.  

The developer is the Data Set Development Service within NHS England.

Note: This consultation is aimed primarily at system suppliers, middleware providers and care commissioners. However, it is public and therefore open to all people with an interest in NHS AACC data.

If you prefer to submit a Word version of your response, please email a copy to standards.assurance@nhs.net.

All other enquiries about this consultation should be directed to enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk (ref ‘NHS AACC v2.0 consultation’ in the subject line).

NB: The survey includes a small number of questions with a clickable arrow, which include 'More Information' for considering your reply. 

*In November 2020, the Data Coordination Board (DCB) was replaced by a new, cross organisational Data Alliance Partnership. The strategic Board of the Data Alliance Partnership, the DAPB, approves data collections, extractions, and information standards for health and social care in England. Queries about the DAPB should be directed to the DAPB secretariat at dataalliance.partnership@nhsx.nhs.uk