NHS Clinical Commissioners 20 October 2016
- Informed by interviews with CCG leaders and other key stakeholders, this paper reaffirms the role and position of local clinical commissioning into the future, and sets out the opportunities and challenges that need to be grasped if we are to truly transform healthcare while delivering within available resources.
- Key messages
- In the future, there is unlikely to be a single model of clinical commissioning but all models should be locally driven and defined.
- The unique value of CCGs is their clinical leadership, expertise and local knowledge of the communities they serve – this must not be lost.
- CCGs cannot delegate their statutory functions but they can contract for delivery of them differently.
- CCGs should become hubs for strategic, wholesystem and place-based commissioning of services.
- The financial and human resource that currently sits within the commissioning system needs to be rebalanced to support increased strategic commissioning by CCGs.
- Strategic commissioning provides an opportunity for CCGs to increasingly work together.
- CCGs and clinical leaders are embracing the development of new models of care as system enablers.
- Based on what works locally, CCG mergers should be permitted in certain circumstances, and closer collaboration among others should be encouraged.
- Where a model of strategic commissioning develops, we expect national bodies to support this as a valuable part of the health system.
