The effective commissioning of a health and social care service is a significant challenge. Decisions around service availability, quality and utility are often complex and multi-layered. But it becomes increasingly difficult for commissioners to provide high quality care services, if they are not in touch with the experiences of the people using, and in need of them.

Service user experiences of specific conditions, care services and how they navigate care pathways need to be accounted for and understood when developing commissioning strategies. Even after commissioning decisions are made people’s experience of care services remain a key component in informing the quality of and access to the commissioned services themselves.

In 2013 Picker worked with two of London’s largest Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) to improve primary care quality in the area by studying patients’ experience of access to local services.

Care user’s experiences are vital to ensuring good commissioning decisions

Although the objectives and approaches of each project differed, the findings revealed common themes such as appropriate communication, service flexibility, support and education, all playing a massive role in a patient’s choice to use, or in some cases, not use a service. Ultimately, a service being commissioned and “available” did not necessarily guarantee patient accessibility.

The first project revealed that, whilst on the surface the CCG was providing and tailoring services to each community group’s individual needs and requirements, when probed deeper there were many avoidable glitches in the details that were collectively causing fundamental roadblocks to the quality of care services available.