Delivering health care through managed clinical networks (MCNs): lessons from the North

The purpose of this study is to explore how health care professionals come together to deliver care across managed clinical networks. We will examine how networks are put together, the ways in which they operate, and the impacts of care delivered in this way. We will do this by examining in-depth the history and current arrangements of four contrasting managed clinical networks: two covering diabetes care, and two covering the care of heart disease. In each of these disease areas, one of the networks covered is a ‘voluntary network’, created bottom-up by enthusiastic local clinicians; the other is a ‘mandated network’, created by policy diktat. One of our research questions is to explore the difference in operation and impacts between these different sorts of networks. In addition to gathering data on four specific networks, we will conduct national surveys of other networks to assess the extent to which our local findings apply nationally. We will be assisted in our work by an advisory group consisting of both professionals and service users.