Study investigators
Professor Barbara Hanratty, Dr Rachel Stocker, Rachel Duncan, Claire Bamford
Newcastle University, Institute of Health and Society
Liz Newbronner
Firefly Research

Background and rationale
The NHS policy document ‘Five Year Forward View’ was published in October 2014. It outlined the challenges facing the NHS in the next five years, which include tackling variation in care quality, and the need to deliver more integrated, personalised care. To address these challenges NHS England commissioned fifty ‘vanguard’ sites, to develop new care models which will act as a blueprint for future NHS services. Newcastle Gateshead Clinical Commissioning Group (NGCCG) were successful in their bid to become one of six enhanced care in care homes vanguards, under the vision of ‘one bed, one outcome’. Their belief is that it shouldn’t matter who the commissioner, provider or person is; the patient or resident should receive the right care, in the right place, at the right time. To achieve this goal, the NGCCG care home vanguard programme is developing a sustainable, high quality new care model. This will be delivered first to people in community beds and then rolled out to recipients of home based care services across Newcastle Gateshead.
NGCCG have commissioned a specific piece of work around its new Pathway of Care. The aim is to produce findings that are locally relevant, as well as answering national questions of interest to the central evaluation team.

Research Questions
• How has the POC developed and what are the keys to success?
• Participant views on the approach to clinical leadership and engagement
• How and why has the approach changed practice and influenced resident care
• How may the model and team need to change across different settings to enhance care delivery
• What are the main anticipated barriers to implementation

Design
This is a qualitative, exploratory study. Twenty-three semi-structured interviews (telephone or face-to-face) were conducted with key stakeholders involved in the pathway of care. These have been supplemented by observations of POC meetings. Analysis is ongoing.