The New Models of Care Vanguard Programme in England: National Programme Evaluation.

Health and care services are usually provided by different types of
organisations, which operate separately and do not communicate well
together. This harms patient experiences and can lead to unnecessary
costs. The Vanguard New Care Models programme is a new government
initiative to help services move quickly to change this, breaking down
barriers and improving care. Fifty examples of new ways of providing
services have been established, called ‘Vanguards’. They have received
funding and support to set up. There are five types of Vanguard, covering
different types of services. They have been developed, implemented and
evaluated locally, helped by a national support team. They aim to improve
population health and wellbeing; the quality of care and access to care;
and service efficiency. The government now wants this national
programme to be evaluated.
This project brings together researchers from Manchester, Kent and London with
experience of these types of evaluation. It is a complex evaluation, because the
Vanguards are also affected by other initiatives which are trying to change
services. We are working closely with them and the national support team to
make sure our evaluation is relevant, does not duplicate nor overburden
Vanguards.
We aim to investigate the overall effects of the Vanguard programme on
the NHS. We want to find out how well Vanguards have been able to
implement changes, what has helped or hindered, what they think of the
support from the national team, and the effects on service users and NHS
costs. We are doing this in four ways. First are exploring the national
backdrop, interviewing people from the national support team and
regulators, and start building up a picture of economic issues. Secondly we
are analysing each Vanguard's local evaluations. Thirdly we have choosen six Vanguards to explore their experiences more in depth, and we will also do a national evaluation of outcomes, costs and cost-effectiveness. We will combine all of the data in order to give some clear messages about this approach to
service improvement. We intend to share the results as soon as they are
produced to make sure we can rapidly learn from this investigation.