Commissioning groups want more support and less red tape
pharmafile | September 29, 2011 | News story | | NHS reforms
Clinical Commissioning Groups are concerned by the amount of bureaucracy they face and feel they don’t have enough support, according to an NHS Alliance survey.
Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) have been set up in place of the proposed GP Consortia to take on commissioning under the watch of the NHS Commissioning Board in 2013.
The NHS Alliance’s findings detail requests by CCGs for more involvement at a local level, and show that over a third have not been involved in shaping commissioning support that has been put into place.
Julie Wood, director of the NHS Alliance Clinical Commissioning Federation, said there remained a lot more work to be done on shaping the commissioning process.
“We need to ensure that all CCGs are involved locally in shaping the support available to them and, equally important, that they are aware of the choices available and are able to choose according to their specific needs.”
Although 47% of CCGs said they were fully involved in commissioning, 32% said they were not and a further 21% were ‘not sure’.
The survey had 131 respondents and when asked about the style of working with the NHS Commissioning Board and transitional PCT clusters most CCGs said it was too centralist (44%) and too prescriptive (19%), and only 18% found it about right.
One respondent said: “There are too many meetings focused on structures with no relevance to empowering CCGs or transforming clinical care … this is not a liberating process – it is painful, slow and bureaucratic.”
However, despite the issues raised by the survey 60% of CCGs still said they were confident they would be ready to assume responsibility for commissioning health services from April 2013.
Brett Wells
Related Content
Hospitals on ‘brink of collapse’, warn doctors
Hospitals across the UK are struggling to cope with emergency admissions, and a doctors’ group …
Storm clouds gathering over the NHS, say its leaders
NHS managers are using their annual conference to criticise the government’s savings programmes. The government …
Risk register spells out NHS reform risks
A leaked document that assesses problems with the government’s reform of the NHS has been …
