In January 2015, the NHS invited individual organisations and partnerships, to apply to become vanguard sites for the New Models of Care Programme, one of the first steps towards delivering the 5YFV and supporting improvement and integration of services.

There was an open and well-advertised application process, which saw 269 groups of nurses, doctors and other health and social care staff express their interest in developing a model in one of the three selected models of care, with the aim of transforming delivery of local care. The three models of care were:

1. Integrated primary and acute care systems (PACs) which would join up GP, community, mental health and hospital services;
2. Multispecialty community providers (MCPs) which would aim to move services out of hospitals and into the community;
3. Models of enhanced care in care homes which would aim to improve services for older people, joining up health, care and rehabilitation.

On 10th March 2015, the 29 successful vanguard sites were announced.

LPCs who were located in a vanguard site were invited to participate in a teleconference on 15th June 2015 to share information on pharmacy involvement in the vanguard projects in their area. Vanguard teleconference minutes 15th June 2015.

Phase two of the programme was announced on 20th May 2015, with an aim of developing innovative ways of delivering high quality acute care for patients. All providers of acute services, including small hospitals, were invited to become vanguard sites for new models of acute care collaboration. In September 2015 a further 13 vanguards were announced – known as acute care collaborations. 

On 3rd June 2015 the NHS announced a further new care model focusing on urgent and emergency care (UEC), and invited expressions of interest from organisations and partnerships across England.

Leading-edge systems that were making the strongest progress and those local health systems experiencing the very greatest operational challenges, for example, on the A&E 4 hour standard were to be the focus for this new care model.

On 24th July 2015, NHS England Chief Executive Simon Stevens and the NHS 5YFV partners announced eight new vanguard sites that would launch the transformation of urgent and emergency care for more than nine million people. This came as NHS England also revealed the success of Regional Major Trauma Networks which, after they were set up just three years ago, have seen a remarkable 50% increase in the odds of survival for trauma patients revealed in a new independent audit by the Trauma Audit and Research Network (TARN).

Building on the recent success in improving trauma survival rates, the urgent and emergency care vanguards were tasked with changing the way in which all organisations worked together to provide care in a more joined up way for patients.

Urgent care would be delivered, not just in hospitals but also by GPs, pharmacists, community teams, ambulance services, NHS 111, social care and others, and through patients being given support and education to manage their own conditions. Another aim was to break down boundaries between physical and mental health to improve the quality of care and experience for all.

Six vanguards covered smaller local systems which included hospitals and surrounding GP practices and social care, while two network vanguards worked with much larger populations to integrate care on a greater scale.

In August 2015, NHS England published Safer, faster, better: good practice in delivering urgent and emergency care a practical  summary of the design principles that local health and social care communities need to adopt to deliver safer, faster and better urgent and emergency care. These principles were drawn from good practice, which has been tried, tested and delivered successfully by the NHS in local areas across England. The report highlighted the valuable contributions that community pharmacies can make to local health communities’ urgent care programmes and provides examples of community pharmacy services that can reduce pressure on general practice and enhance patient safety.

The National Association of Primary Care (NAPC) launched their new care model style primary care programme at their annual conference in October 2015. The Primary Care Home (PCH) model is designed to support the strengthening of primary care in line with the new care models outlined in the NHS Five Year Forward View.

The programme developed the NAPC’s primary care home model and was endorsed by NHS England with principles aligned to multispecialty community provider (MCP), one of the types of new care model vanguards.

The main features of the PCH model are:

• provision of care to a defined, registered population of between 30,000 and 50,000;
• aligned clinical financial drivers through a unified, capitated budget with appropriate shared risks and rewards;
• an integrated workforce, with a strong focus on partnerships spanning primary, secondary and social care; and
• a combined focus on personalisation of care with improvements in population health outcomes.

Details of the PCH sites and further information on the programme can be found on the NAPC website.

In August 2017, the Nuffield Trust published an evaluation report of the PCH model, which looked at how sites can make early progress with implementing and evaluating their local PCH models and potential challenges. 

In July 2016, NHS England published the The multispecialty community provider emerging care model and contract framework, which described what being an MCP meant, based on assembling the core features from the 14 MCP vanguards into a common framework.  In addition, the document includes proposals for how the new voluntary contract may work. It proposes the contract will be a multi-year contract with payment operating on the basis of a whole population budget, a new pay-for-performance incentive scheme and risk-and gain-share agreement with the hospital sector. 

The document, Mapping of sites to LPCs, was created to map the Vanguard sites and other NHS initiatives to LPC areas

NHS Clinical Commissioners – Learning from the vanguards: New publications launched (January 2018)

PSNC Briefing 059/17: Integrating care: contracting for accountable models (August 2017) 

NHS Clinical Commissioners – Sharing learning from new care models (July 2017)

PSNC Briefing 050/16: Integrated primary and acute care systems (PACS) – Describing the care model and the business model (October 2016)
This PSNC Briefing summarises NHS England’s document, Integrated primary and acute care systems (PACS) – Describing the care model and the business model, which describes a framework covering the core elements of the population-based accountable care model and the options for commissioning and providing a PACS. It will be of particular interest to LPC members who have PACS being developed in their area.

Presentation at the Pharmacy Show: Changing pharmacy to flourish in the world of new models of care – David Bearman (Sept 2016) (If prompted, password is: pharmacy16)

PSNC Briefing 045/16: An introduction to multispecialty community providers (MCPs) and the emerging contract framework (September 2016)
This PSNC Briefing summarises NHS England’s document The multispecialty community provider (MCP) emerging care model and contract framework (July 2016), which describes MCPs – a new place-based model of care – and the emerging contract framework which NHS England is currently developing to support the rollout of this approach to health and care provision.

NHS Confederation: Framework sets out how to be a multispecialty community provider (July 2016)

NHS Confederation – New care models and staff engagement: All aboard (June 2016)

NHS Confederation – New care models and prevention: An integral partnership (May 2016)

NHS England – Evaluation strategy for new care model vanguards (May 2016)

NHS Confederation – Understanding the vanguards factsheet (February 2016)

NHS Confederation – Spreading the learning of the NHS vanguards animation (February 2016)