Centre for Health and the Public Interest (May 2015)
- Little is known about how CCGs inspect and enforce contracts with the private sector.
- Using available official data, and data from 181 CCGs which responded to a survey, this report concludes "that the NHS is poorly equipped to ensure that healthcare services outsourced to for-profit providers will provide safe, high-quality care and good value for money. "
- The report makes a number of recommendations relevant to commissioners in CCGs relating to how contracting records are managed; processes for monitoring contracts; mechanisms to define and identify poor performance; processes and governance arrangements for managing poor performance; the support (e.g. commercial, legal) available for managing contracts with large commercial organisations; the resources and specialist skills required and available to manage contracts going forward.
