Luciana Berger – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-05-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure that block contracts are being phased out for mental health services.

Alistair Burt

NHS England and NHS Improvement are introducing changes to the National Tariff that will rule out unaccountable block contracts for adult mental health services that provide poor value for money and do not support the adoption of new models of care. NHS England and NHS Improvement have developed two possible payment models that could be adopted locally – one based on care clusters on an episodic or year of care basis, and the other a capitation-based model.

Whichever payment model is adopted for use locally, there should be a strong element that links payment to outcomes, particularly the recommendations arising from the report of the independent Mental Health Taskforce.