The All Together Better Sunderland multispecialty community provider model brings together health services, social care and the voluntary sector to keep vulnerable patients out of hospital.
While five city-wide integrated teams had been working on an agreement between the different providers on separate contracts, Sunderland Clinical Commissioning Group is now planning to bring the vanguard under a single contract.
To pave the way for this, leaders across the region are exploring how to set up a single entity to hold that contract and provide services, with the CCG hoping it will be live by April 2018.
Sunderland CCG deputy chief officer Debbie Burnicle said the aim is to have one provider holding the contract to run the MCP.
She said: “Our preference would be a new entity; it cannot just be more of the same. Our ambition is to have the new entity secured and in place by April 2018.
“We still need to come to a view about the best way to procure and commissioning that entity.”
The MCP provides rapid home response services from teams made up of community nurses, social workers, GPs and volunteers to prevent people being admitted to hospital.
Full story in The HSJ, 24 March 2017