Dementia commissioning pack launched by Department of Health

The Dementia Commissioning Pack provides practical resources for health and social care commissioners to work together to improve the quality of both specialist dementia services and general health and care services for people with dementia and their carers.

The pack has been developed in consultation with a range of health and social care experts, including people with dementia and their carers. It aims to:

Improve quality of services for people with dementia by placing patient outcomes and patient choice at the heart of the commissioning process;
Drive efficiency by reducing unwarranted variation in services;
Reduce bureaucracy for commissioners by providing tailored documents and templates, bringing together the different aspects of commissioning (clinical, financial, commercial, contractual and procurement).

The Pack provides a commissioning framework, the clinical evidence and economic case for change, best practice specifications and costing tools, and information for people using services. Opportunities to review and reduce the inappropriate prescribing of antipsychotics for people with dementia features throughout the resource and linked to the national initiative: The Right Prescription: a call to action on the use of antipsychotic drugs for people with dementia.

Also published today is the Equalities action plan, which sets out a series of planned actions in relation to the implementation of the National Dementia Strategy and the Dementia Commissioning Pack. It supplements the Equality Impact Assessment published alongside the National Dementia Strategy in 2009 and has been compiled in line with the requirements of the Equality Act 2010.