Aim & Role of JSNA in informing local planning and commissioning of services
Joint Strategic Needs Assessments are a kind of needs analysis used within strategic planning and used to inform subsequent commissioning. Other guidance on needs assessment within strategic planning can be found within Healthcare Improvement Scotland’s (HIS) guidance on good strategic planning.
Needs assessments are a critical component to planning and commissioning and they enable us to plan with the population’s current and future need as our starting point, rather than the existing service and system. This means we aren’t limited to just iterating our current approaches within planning, but are able to keep us accountable to the need of the populations we support.
Needs assessments are a critical input into planning, but shouldn’t be considered in isolation. They should be drawn from and triangulated with other forms of evidence and insight such as lived experience, management data, staff views, and prior research and literature to form a comprehensive evidence base for planning.
Please refer to the HIS resource portal (Strategic Planning Role | HIS Engage) for more information.
Information on needs assessment are included in the HIS Good Practice Framework for Strategic Planning guide (Who we are, what we do) on p17 (fig x below), and Good Practice Skills in Strategic Planning skills framework (Good Practice Skills for Strategic Planning) on p19 (fig x below).
Fig x – Reference to needs assessment in HIS Good Practice Framework for Strategic Planning guide
