The Drug Strategy sets out an ambition to explore how to use Payment by Results (PBR) to incentivise the drug treatment system to improve delivery of recovery outcomes. The proposal to develop a PBR drug recovery pilot programme was approved by the Government and is being overseen by a steering group of officials from five government departments and the NTA.

The steering group agreed a two-stage process: first we need to work through local partnerships because they hold the local budgets and contracts, and  their involvement is essential  to ensure that the pilot schemes meet local need. After this, service providers will be brought in by the partnerships which are running the pilots. The essence of the PBR scheme is to put providers at the centre of the process, freeing them to be more innovative, attracting new providers to the market and giving them more financial autonomy.

The programme is operating to tight timescales, since the government wants the pilots up and running as soon as possible. The invitation to participate was issued just before Christmas, and by the deadline last week 29 expressions of interest had been submitted. These will now be used to select a shortlist of around 15 candidates. They will be invited (in the week commencing 31 January) to submit a full proposal, the deadline for which is midday on 24 February.

Once the pilot sites are selected and signed off by the steering group, there is a co-design phase where the project team will work closely with the pilot sites to develop a model that works best for each area. The steering group does not want to be prescriptive about the contracting approach to be taken in each pilot area, and is keen to see a range of models piloted. Once each pilot site has developed its PBR model, the pilots will start in September and October 2011 and continue to 2013.  An independent evaluation will be funded and commissioned by the Dept of Health.

For more information on the PBR pilot process, see NTA announcement on 21 December 2010, which includes links to the covering letter to potential bidders and to the invitation to participate which has more details about the pilot programme . If you want to discuss PBR with the NTA, please contact Megan Jones on 020 7972 1975 or email Megan.Jones@nta-nhs.org.uk or Emma Christie on 0207 972 1942, email Emma.Christie@nta-nhs.org.uk