Guidance on the national process for resolving disputes

2018/19 Contract Alignment Exercise Guidance on the national process for resolving disputes
NHS England 12 December 2018

• This document sets out the national approach to managing contractual disputes between NHS commissioners and Trusts under the 2018/19 Year To Date Contract Alignment Exercise.

Lessons learned from contract dispute resolution

Lessons learned from contract dispute resolution
NHS England NHS Improvement 2 November 2018

• This document contains ten helpful hints for commissioners and providers to avoid conflict.

The ten hints

Review of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CCG contract with Uniting Care

NHS England Review of Uniting Care Contract: 

NHS England April 2016

• The overall objective of this work is to establish, from a commissioner perspective, the key facts and root causes behind the collapse of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CCG contract with Uniting Care Partnership in December 2015 and to advise on next steps.

Can the NHS handle the outsourcing of clinical services?

The contracting NHS – can the NHS handle the outsourcing of clinical services?
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.

NHS outsourcing - effective monitoring is key

The contracting NHS –can the NHS handle the outsourcing of clinical services?
Centre for Health and the Public Interest, March 2015

• Over the last four years there has been a 50% increase in the amount spent in the private sector on community health services and secondary care services by local commissioning bodies and NHS trusts, and this trend looks set to continue with the requirement on CCGs to put services out to competitive tender. 
• The safety and quality of healthcare in England now depends increasingly on how effectively the NHS monitors and enforces this myriad of contracts with the private sector. But contracting for healthcare is highly problematic and little is known about how CCGs inspect and enforce contracts with the private sector. 
• The report makes a number of recommendations if the outsourcing of NHS clinical services to the private sector is to continue including:
• an independent audit of CCGs’ capacity to monitor and manage contracts with non-NHS providers
• a reconsideration of plans to privatise the contract monitoring of NHS contracts.
• CCGs should be required to publish regular performance data on the number and value of contracts they hold, how they know whether contracts are performing well, the number and type of staff they employ to monitor and enforce contracts, and the amount of any over-payments they may have made to providers due to error or fraud.