National health and wellbeing outcomes framework

10. Delivering and evidencing improvement

Integration Authorities are under a statutory obligation to develop a strategic plan^[11] in line with the integration principles. A strategic plan is to set out arrangements for integrated health and social care and how those arrangements will lead to the improvement of the outcomes for the communities that they serve.

Strategic planning is the mechanism through which partners will work together to deliver and plan services that focus on people and their outcomes. When services are delivered in line with the plan, the person delivering a service is to do so in line with the national health and wellbeing outcomes. In this way partners across statutory, third and independent sectors, will embed a preventative and anticipatory approach to commissioning services - rethinking how best to meet the needs of communities.

Integration Authorities will require robust information and intelligence if the potential benefits of strategic planning are to be realised. In order to support this, the Scottish Government has commissioned NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) to develop linked individual level longitudinal health and social care datasets^[12] for all Integration Authorities. These datasets will be provided via a secure storage solution.

Integration Authorities are required to publish an annual performance report, and regulations set out the prescribed content of these reports. The regulations provide for significant flexibility in how and what Integration Authorities will report on to ensure that the annual performance report covers the main aspects of this reform but reflects local priorities.

The Scottish Government is developing a measurement framework that sets out a range of data sources and associated improvement tools and techniques that can support improvement. Integration Authorities will wish to use this to inform local practice and to showcase improvement within their annual performance report. Guidance on the performance report is being developed and will be published by Summer 2015.

To ensure that there is a measure of comparability and focus on national priorities, the regulations require that all Integration Authorities report on key measures and indicators. The Scottish Government's will set out the key measures and indicators, which should be used to comply with this requirement within a measurement framework.