The Commissioner: January 2008

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

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Towards World Class Commissioning Competency

This paper is intended to assist the thinking of those currently seeking answers to questions, such as: What are health care commissioners required to do? What knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours are required to do it well? Who (either within or beyond the NHS) is most likely to possess these attributes at the moment? How should these capabilities be developed and distributed in future? The paper concludes that a one-size fits- all approach to defining and developing commissioning competency is unlikely to be optimal, and reiterates that competency depends not just on knowledge and skills, but on values, motivation, and agency. This is an important message for those involved in commissioning at all levels of the system.

(Published December 2007, 24 pages)

Practice based commissioning - budget setting refinements and clarification of health funding flexibilities, incentive schemes and governance

The direction of travel for practice based commissioning remains unchanged. This document follows up the commitment made in Practice based commissioning: practical implementation to refine the budget setting methodology, and responds to requests received through the Commissioning Framework for Health and Well-being consultation for clarification on the flexible use of NHS funds, governance arrangements and incentive schemes.

(Published December 2007, 16 pages)

King's Fund statement on NHS Operating Framework 2008/09

Commenting in response to the publication of the NHS Operating Framework for 2008/09, King’s Fund chief executive Niall Dickson said:

'It is right that the government should set national priorities and right too that they should maintain the assault on hospital infections and the drive to cut waiting time. These are areas that patients are justifiably concerned about and it is imperative the NHS makes progress in them.‘

Crucially, this document is an important step forward in getting to grips with what has long been the Achilles heel of the service – commissioning. The Department of Health is right to emphasise that better care and services will not be achieved through central directives and targets, but through better local commissioning led by primary care trusts (PCTs).

Practice and Provider Monitor (PPM) - a common information source for both providers and commissioners

Designed to build on the Practice Based Commissioning (PBC) and Hospital Activity Tracker (HAT) tools, PPM allows commissioners, GPs and service providers to share, discuss and monitor in-hospital activity on-line.

The new PPM tool includes: new, easy-to-use tool design; budgeting function with the ability to upload and cascade budgets down to practice level; an activity query facility, enabling the GPs, PCTs and acute trusts to highlight queries and resolutions with one another; new standard built-in reports; an HRG national tariff look-up table for easy reference.

Collaborative commissioning of National Screening Programmes

This best practice guidance sets out roles and responsibilities for the collaborative commissioning of national screening programmes, as recommended in Sir David Carter's Review of Commissioning Arrangements for Specialised Services.

(Published December 2007, 23 pages)

A funding model for health visiting

This is the second of two papers offering the information required to work out how to fund a health visiting service. The first paper gave the basic requirements, while this one identifies and explains the separate components of the service along with issues of scope and skill mix.

Community Practitioner, Dec 2007, vol. 80, no. 12, p. 24-31

A personal approach to public services

Across the political spectrum there is broad agreement around the direction of travel in public service reform, with the emphasis being on localism, citizen engagement, plurality of provision, personalisation, and choice. The ultimate prize is public services that are targeted at the greatest need, delivered in a coherent way, and responsive to users’ views and experiences. This is addressed by A Personal Approach to Public Services.

(Published 2007, 27 pages)

Evidence-based Commissioning Collaboration

The Evidence-based Commissioning Collaboration is currently made up of 2 commissioning consortia: North Derbyshire, South Yorkshire & Bassetlaw Commissioning Consortium (NORCOM), and part of The North East Yorkshire & North Lincolnshire Primary Care Organisation (NEYNL), which, on behalf of PCTs in their areas, are working with the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR). ScHARR is based in the University of Sheffield and houses the northern arm of the Trent Research and Development Support Unit.

The objective of the Collaboration is to share research knowledge about the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of service interventions to inform the commissioning process. These will usually be interventions which are not likely to be addressed by NICE in the near future. The choice of topics is determined collectively by the PCTs through their commissioning Consortia.

The Commissioner