Birmingham OwnHealth contract extended

NHS Birmingham East and North has signed an extension with NHS Direct and Pfizer to continue to run its Birmingham OwnHealth service.

The contract for OwnHealth – a telephone-based service offering one-to-one support and advice people with long term conditions – was due to expire in March but has been renewed for an additional year.

In September, PCT chief executive Andrew Donald told EHI Primary Care that he had told general practices that they would need to make a decision about whether to continue and develop the service.

But on a visit to the city last week, John Grayland, senior strategy and redesign manager, told EHI: “We’ve signed an extension with Pfizer and NHS Direct until 2012. Then we’ll go to tender again, probably in April or May of this year.

“It’s so difficult because it’s very fluid at the moment with the NHS reforms. This week it looks like three GP consortia will emerge for the area, and if that’s how it remains it will be up to them if they want to keep OwnHealth."

Grayland said that as the consortia emerge, decisions will be handed over to them about whether to tender the service or not.

But it is likely that if there is a tender, it will be for the full service – software, protocols, IP, people and hardware – rather than for different providers for the individual parts.

Earlier this month, the PCT announced that more than 10,000 people have signed up to OwnHealth, which has been in place since 2006.

On the visit, Donald unveiled figures showing a drop in emergency admissions among a small group of OwnHealth users with COPD and diabetes, who are using Honeywell HomMed devices to monitor aspects of their health.

But he stressed: “It’s no good 15,000 people going through OwnHealth and it’s no good 180 people receiving the equipment. We need to take all the people with a chronic condition in our patch and give them OwnHealth and the technology to support it.

“We need to take a massive risk in terms of putting the money up front to do that.”