Tags are keywords. I put tags on every post to help you find the content you want. Tags may be people (Dominic Raab, say), organisations (The Howard League, PRT), themes (women offenders, homelessness) or specific items (heroin, racial disparity, ROTL). If you’re looking to research a particular issue, they can be invaluable.
Belated publication of PbR drug & alcohol recovery pilots outcomes show mixed performance with fewer successful treatment completions than in non-PbR areas.
The main message from the literature is that commissioners need to be proactive in ensuring that PbR providers deliver a good quality service — particularly when service users include vulnerable groups
When outcomes are the basis for payment, it is important that the provider receiving the payments is responsible for achieving the outcomes. Targets should not be unduly influenced by external factors (such as the state of the economy for Work Programme type schemes) or by the work of other agencies who are not receiving payment from the contract.
commissioners are urged to consider whether potential providers have sufficient financial resources to bid for a contract which requires considerable initial investment and where payments are delayed until the achievement of outcome measures has been verified.
It is not possible to transfer all risk, be that risk reputational, practical or financial. Commissioners retain their responsibility for local citizens receiving a good quality and effective service.
The rationale for PbR This is the second post in a blog series looking at the lessons I’ve learned from a recent review of the
The Committee criticises the Work Programme for failing to find work for 70% claimants who it says require more personalised and intensive support to address complex barriers to working.
The NAO makes a very strong recommendation not only that all government payment by results schemes should be evaluated but that these evaluations should be shared across government in order to develop a more robust evidence base for PbR; indicating whether and how this commissioning model should be utilised.
To date, government has mainly used payment by results as a cost-cutting exercise with PbR focusing attention on the bottom line rather than on achieving more sustainable outcomes which benefit society and bring long term savings to the public purse.
In my experience, many commissioners are very proud to announce that they are adopting a PbR based contracting system, while just as many are somewhat sheepish about the need to include some element of PbR because it is seen as contributing in some way to the need to reduce commissioning budgets.
Following a balanced and coherent examination of these key difficulties based on the real life application of PbR in the UK through the various homeless, workless, offending and troubled families initiatives, the Revolving Doors report comes to five principal conclusions:
Reform argues that there is a bell curve to innovation. When prices are set too high, providers make easy profits and public money is wasted. But setting prices aggressively low means that new providers are unable to innovate and tend to focus on easy to achieve results, which might not even have required a government funded intervention in the first place.
