The Department of Health (DH) has announced plans for a new organisation to help the NHS and social care bodies deliver “more productive and people-centred care”.
The idea for the Centre for Workforce Intelligence was formed after A High Quality Workforce – a 2008 review into the future of the NHS that described a need for an organisation to offer guidance and control on the quality of workforce planning across the NHS and social care system.
It is hoped the Centre will help health and social care services by removing bureaucracy, efficiently organising resources and focusing on moving care into homes and the community.
This will be achieved following guidance set out in the recently published Planning and Developing the NHS Workforce: The National Framework, which encourages health and social care services to “review their own regional system to ensure that it is robust, supports the quality and productivity agenda and fits effectively with the national operating system.”
Such services and organisations include strategic health authorities, the Sector Skills Council, the Information Centre for Health and Social Care, professional advisory boards and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence
‘The Centre for Workforce Intelligence will work in partnership with the many stakeholders to establish the Centre as the primary source of workforce intelligence for health and social care,” said Peter Sharp, the newly appointed chief executive for the Centre, and director of learning and wellbeing at consulting and business service group, Mouchel who will run the project.
‘The Centre will provide objective, robust and rigorous workforce intelligence to support the delivery of high-quality services. We will enable leaders, senior managers and clinicians to use this intelligence to develop the workforce in the short, medium and long-term.”
More specific duties will include promoting best practice in workforce planning in the NHS and social care services; making care more people-centred; offering research and expert advice to those involved in health and care services, and ensuring everyone involved in workforce planning both collects and uses data and analysis in an effective way.
Health minister Ann Keen said: “As a nurse, I know that having the right numbers of doctors, nurses and social care workers means they can respond to the needs of their community and ensure that patients get high-quality and people-centred care. To make this happen we need to strengthen workforce planning at all levels of the NHS and social care system.
“The new Centre for Workforce Intelligence will provide an authoritative resource on workforce planning for national and local organisations promoting best practice, looking out for potential staffing issues and providing high quality data.”