The response to Year of Care has been overwhelmingly positive from everyone involved, be they people with long-term conditions, clinicians or managers. 

Headline benefits

We have collated some of the impact of the implementation of systematic personalised care and support planning from areas who have conducted their own independent evaluation of the programme and summarised this in the Year of Care evidence base and impact summary.  These benefits have been seen across a number of health care settings and areas across the UK.

The high level benefits are:

  • People with long-term conditions reported improved experience of care, greater ownership of their conditions and feel more supported to make changes to self-care behaviour

  • Personalised care and support planning work across diverse populations and can be used to address health inequities  

  • Professionals reported improved knowledge and skills and greater job satisfaction

  • Practices reported better organisation of care and clarity around team roles and teamwork

  • Productivity improved - personalised care and support planning is cost neutral at practice level, there are savings for some particularly where the approach is applied as a single process no matter how many conditions they live with

  • Personalised care and support planning takes time to embed; changes in clinical indicators across populations may be seen after two of three care planning cycles

  • The adoption of personalised care planning stimulates practitioners to think about the wider determinants of health and creates stronger links to social prescribing and more than medicine activities across the wider community

The overall programme has been able to demonstrate important impacts on patient experience and behaviour, job satisfaction for staff, practice organisation and strengthening links with local communities. Much of this is contained within our publication and references area of the website and within the reports from pilot programmes. 

Year of Care have partnered with Scottish Government and the Health and Social Care Alliance to roll out personalised care and support planning in Scotland (Scotland’s House of Care Programme).  Working with Matter of Focus and their innovative ‘OutNav’ approach to evaluation based on contribution analysis a summary of findings from national and local evaluation across Scotland between 2015 and 2020 has been produced.  The full report can be viewed here.

 

The following clips from primary care teams describe the impact of personalised care and support planning 

Sue Arnott, a GP in Lanarkshire, explains the value of care and support planning within a general practice setting. 

A patient and practice nurse from Macduff Medical Practice in Grampian discuss their experience of a personalised care and support planning conversation and the positive effects it had.

Paul McClintock, a GP involved in the original care planning pilots, explains the benefits he has seen.