National Specification for psychological therapies and interventions - national implementation guide 3: psychology operational plan

Purpose of this Guide

This guide has been developed for use by NHS Board Psychology Services to support the development of comprehensive Psychology Service Operational Plans that can act as a route to the enhancement of service delivery and management. This is referenced in ‘The Matrix’ published by NHS Education for Scotland as important to creating confidence around effectiveness, efficiency and patient safety (see The Matrix - Operational Considerations) including ensuring safe and appropriate staffing levels and addressing waiting lists to achieve access targets.

Effective operational planning is essential to ensuring the delivery of healthcare in an effective and efficient manner through setting direction and associated expected outcomes and targets, and describing in some detail how these will be delivered. Typically, there will be an element of ‘improvement’ which, in the health and social care context, refers broadly to any change which leads to an improvement in outcomes for patients in comparison to those seen previously. The focus of an Operational Plan may vary depending on existing policy and strategy and operational challenges and priorities facing individual services or collection of services.

The National Specification for Psychological Therapies and Interventions describes various operational aspects of service delivery and outcomes for patients including specific resourcing and access performance targets:

Outcome 1 – High Quality Care and Support

1.11 Information technology and data systems that support psychological practice should align with ongoing developments across Health and Social Care to provide improved functionality and connectivity.

Outcome 2 – I Am Fully Involved in Decisions About My Care

2.2 I will have started treatment no longer than 18 weeks from referral as stated in the Public Health Scotland (PHS) national waiting times standard.

Outcome 3 – High Quality Interventions and Treatments

3.10 The PHS trajectory modelling tool should be used as a guide so that managers and leaders can advise staff at different grades on recommended activity levels. Line management should also be used to support workload management for appropriately trained psychological professionals so that staff wellbeing is also considered.

Outcome 7 – Confidence in the Staff Delivering Services

7.9 Staffing activity should be based on the PHS trajectory modelling tool and take into account specific clinical services, population need and local circumstances so people receive the level of support needed.

This Implementation Guide follows a structure that can be used to develop, or update an existing Operational Plan and sets out the contents that could be included. It is not definitive as it may be appropriate to omit some items or include additions according to local circumstances and priorities. However, in general it would be expected that most aspects will be required in a comprehensive Operational Plan. Additional guidance on presentation formats for key data and tools to support Capacity Modelling and Demand, Capacity, Activity and Queue (DCAQ) Analysis is referenced in the Appendices and provided in the supporting documents (http://www.gov.scot/ISBN/9781807750831/documents). It is expected that Boards will need to provide Psychology management teams with financial, analytics and human resources support to enable the development of a robust and comprehensive plan.