Policy Guidance and toolkits: World Class commissioning of primary care and community services

These documents are for commissioners and form part of a series of supporting guides to help primary care trusts become world class commissioners of primary care and community services. They have been co-produced by NHS East of England, NHS Primary Care Contracting (NHS PCC), and the Department of Health.

In addition to the first two guides (Primary care and community services: improving dental access, quality and oral health and Primary care and community services: improving GP services, published 27 January 2009) More guides are coming soon:

• Interactive toolkit for improving access and responsiveness of GP services
• Improving pharmaceutical services
• Measuring for quality improvement
• Improving services for socially excluded groups

Personal health budgets: first steps

Lord Darzi announced in High Quality Care for All that the Department will launch a pilot of personal health budgets in 2009, as a way of giving people greater control over the services they use and who provides them. Personal Health Budgets: First Steps sets out the principles of personal health budgets, reports on early lessons and invites expressions of interest in the pilot programme.

Published January 2009

Provision of services for adults with tinnitus: a good practice guide

Further to the publication of 'Improving Access to Audiology Services in England' in March 2007, this document provides good practice and evidence to help commissioners and service providers to make changes to the way that adult tinnitus services are delivered, and in particular to reduce waits for patients with the most common hearing difficulties.

Published January 2009, 42 pages

Provision of adult balance services: a good practice guide

Further to the publication in March 2007 of Improving access to audiology services in England, this document provides good practice and evidence to help commissioners and service providers to make changes to the way that adult balance services are delivered, and in particular to reduce waits for patients with the most common hearing difficulties.

Published January 2009, 40 pages

Cancer commissioning guidance

The cancer commissioning guidance announced as part of the Cancer Reform Strategy has been developed to support world-class commissioning of cancer services across the NHS. The guidance sets out, in an easy-to-use format, key issues and questions that commissioners and cancer network teams will want to take into consideration when assessing health needs, reviewing services, developing their contract service specifications and monitoring performance. The cancer commissioning guidance sits alongside the linked web-based cancer commissioning toolkit which supports commissioners of cancer services by providing a range of benchmarked information and data.

Published January 2009, 152 pages

GP referral incentive schemes

There has been concern at the development by primary care trusts (PCTs) of incentive schemes that aim to reduce referral rates or the cost of referrals from general practice to secondary care.

Published January 2009, 5 pages

Guidance on the routine collection of Patient Reported Outcome Measures

This document contains detailed guidance on the routine collection of Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) for elective procedures from 1 April 2009. The document is intended to support providers and PCT commissioners to implement the requirement to collect PROMs contained in the standard NHS contract for acute services.

Published February 2009, 28 pages

Transforming community services and world class commissioning: resource pack for commissioners of community services

This resource pack sets out the principles of good practice when commissioning community services, showcases examples of existing good practice through case studies in 6 clinical areas and signposts commissioners to the most pertinent and relevant information.

Published January 2009, 154 pages

Other documents and conferences

Information for commissioning end of life care released

Care Planning

Transforming community services: enabling new patterns of provision