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Improving care pathways

January 2008

Suggested guidelines for secondary care doctors and GPs
This joint paper produced by the General Practitioners Committee (GPC) and the Central Consultants and Specialists Committee (CCSC) discusses how commissioners can assess whether resources and capacity within the NHS are utilised efficiently and where this is not the case, that care pathways are put in place to support practice based commissioning (PBC) and the development of care closer to home initiatives.

In December 2006, the Department of Health published the comprehensive guidance document ‘Care and resource utilisation: ensuring appropriateness of care’, designed to help commissioners and primary care trusts (PCTs) to review current care pathways to ensure that resources are focused on ‘giving the patient the right treatment in the right place at the right time’ (p8). The practical guidance which provides useful tools to help identify areas of efficiency can be accessed online.

The guidance document ‘How to identify opportunities for care and resource utilisation’ further builds on the Department of Health’s initiative to ensure appropriateness of care and provides a brief introduction for commissioners on how to develop local care and resource utilisation strategies.

To read the guidance in full, please download it in PDF format using the link on the right.