What are provider collaboratives? 

NHS-Led Provider Collaboratives mark a new era for specialised mental health, building on the success of New Care Models for tertiary mental health services. NHS-Led Provider Collaboratives will deliver care closer to home, invest in community services and drive improvements in patient outcomes and experience.

NHS-Led Provider Collaboratives are a new way of planning and providing specialist mental health, learning disability and autism services.   

The Provider Collaboratives aim to change the way services are provided with different organisations working closely together. This means that services will be provided closer to home and as much as possible out of hospital.    

The Lead Provider, for Adults Eating Disorders Services in the North West and Young People and Families Tier 4 Services across Cheshire & Merseyside, Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, is working with other providers to make improvements to local specialist services for people and their families.

The Provider Collaborative is working with people who use these services as well as people who deliver these services to plan what needs to change in the future. 

There are key principles which underpin the Provider Collaborative model:

  • Experts by experience and clinicians leading improvements in care pathways
  • Collaboration between Providers and across local systems
  • Managing resources across the collaborative to make sure that money is spent on support for people at or close to home and help make sure that people don’t go into hospital when they don’t need to.
  • Working with people and groups locally, including people from the voluntary and community sectors.
  • Improvements in quality, patient experience and patient outcomes driving change

The ambition of NHS-Led Provider Collaboratives is to ensure that people with a mental health need who need care experience high quality, specialist care as close to home as appropriately possible and that care is connected to their community.

Provider Collaboratives are aiming to invest in specialist care in the community to help reduce hospital admissions, unless necessary, and to enable people to leave hospital when they are ready.

If you would like to know more about Provider Collaboratives please watch the short video below by NHS England: