NHS West Midlands (NHSWM) commissions a wide variety of non-medical education and training (e.g. nursing, physiotherapy, dietetics, radiology, audiology, OT etc) from a variety of education providers, predominantly from within the West Midlands region on behalf of its local healthcare workforce economy.
The following diagram provides an overview of how NHSWM identifies and plans for education and training needs, commissions provision accordingly and subsequently quality assures this provision:
Individual healthcare provider organisations identify their future educational needs through the workforce planning process. These data are submitted to NHSWM and analysed against national policy drivers, strategic commissioning plans and other sense-checking mechanisms before education commissioning intentions are finalised.
Through analysing the workforce planning data, NHSWM is able to understand and estimate the numbers of healthcare related educational programmes that are required to meet the needs of the future workforce required within the West Midlands. The process also links innovation and new curriculum development to ensure continuous improvement and enhancement of the delivery of education relating to future workforce need.
This information then informs the commissioning process and is underpinned by contractual negotiations and financial agreements. Commissioners agree contracts with education providers based on the required number of healthcare students identified from the workforce planning process. When contracts have been agreed, places are made available through education providers via direct entry to relevant pre and post graduate health related specialty programmes.
Finally, it is important to review the quality of the education and training that has been commissioned to ensure that education programmes are fit for purpose, meeting local requirements and also providing value for money.
In order to do this, NHSWM utilises the Education Commissioning for Quality Framework (ECQ) which replaces the former Ongoing Quality Monitoring and Enhancement (OQME) processes as NHS West Midlands non-medical education quality assurance process in relation to its commissioned education providers.
For more information on the new ECQ process and previous OQME process including education provider review reports, please select a link from the left hand menu.