The South West Provider Collaborative (SWPC) is an NHS-led mental health, learning disability and autism collaborative leading on whole pathway transformation, commissioning, and quality assurance for inpatient and intensive community mental health services across seven integrated care systems.
They aim to ensure that people experience high quality care as close to home as possible, so they can better connect with their support network and local clinical teams, and return to their family, friends, and community as quickly as possible. A distributed leadership model was implemented across the partners to encourage buy in and shared ownership, whilst maintaining the lead provider model.
Action taken
The SWPC set up clinical senates to engage relevant clinical experts equally across their geography to redesign treatment models for each specialised service and develop one assessment criteria to be used consistently within the region. As a result of the redesign of treatment models, clinicians have been able to assess and understand where patients are being over admitted, as well as potentially under admitted, allowing them to re-evaluate their bed stock.
They now use this operating model across each specialised service for the region, which means that providers can support each other more easily and move complex patients when necessary.
The transformations that have been made by involving clinicians in the redesign of treatment models and the commissioning of services have only been possible because of the provider collaborative and its unique position to bring partners together.
Outcomes and impact
The impact of this work can be seen both in the data and in the lived experiences of patients. In October 2020, prior to the recalibration of services in this way, 50% of medium to low secure mental health patients were being treated outside of the region. This was reduced to less than 10% in 2024.
Length of stay overall has been reduced by half since 2020 and all integrated care board areas now have a full community forensic service. In Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, the redesign of treatment pathways and the commissioning of new community alternative services has seen a reduction of 60% in bed use, a reduction of 91% in the need for psychiatric intensive care beds and an 84% reduction in out of region placements since 2020.
The South West Provider Collaborative's partner organisations are Devon Partnership NHS Trust, Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust, Elysium Healthcare, Priory and Livewell South West (Community Interest Company). Find out more about the work of the South West Provider Collaborative here.