GP Consortia
By 2012, legislation will be in place forcing all GP practices in England with a registered list to be part of a commissioning group. Each practice must have a nominated clinician to represent them on the consortium board. There will be no limit to the size of a consortium and Worcestershire surgeries could belong to either the Herefordshire Consortium or the Birmingham and Black Country Consortium.
As PCTs and SHAs are abolished, a new NHS Commissioning Board will calculate practice-level budgets, based on list size and deprivation, and allocate them directly to the consortia. Each GP consortium must have an 'accountable officer' to take financial control of budgets from its PCT. Membership of consortia will be flexible, able to expand, contract, dissolve or merge.
GPs will still be monitored by the CQC and HealthWatch.
Further Reading:
Department of Health White Papers
Healthy Lives Healthy People: Our Strategy for public Health in England
www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/@dh/@en/@ps/documents/digitalasset/dh_122347.pdf
Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS
www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/@dh/@en/@ps/documents/digitalasset/dh_117794.pdf
HealthWatch Update
LINks were established in 2008 as statutory bodies to monitor and influence Health and Social care services. The government is to replace LINks with a new body called HealthWatch which will begin in March 2012.
The new HealthWatch will be part of the local health and wellbeing board. Local HealthWatch will have a key role to play in articulating the user voice when the statutory sector is making decisions about investment and strategic direction of services and how health inequalities can be addressed. Further information on the proposed governance arrangements for HealthWatch will be known when the Health Bill is published this week.
It is proposed that HealthWatch will sit as a member of a newly established Health and Wellbeing Board. It is expected that the Health Bill will confirm that the other core members of the health and wellbeing board will be GP consortia, the director of adult social services, the director of children’s services and the director of public health.
It is anticipated that the legislation will provide opportunities for local innovation and greater responsibility for Local HealthWatch’s. The government wants to create an independent voice for users of health and social care services, and as effective LINks are an excellent example of the ‘Big Society’ in operation, Local HealthWatch must be highly effective at monitoring health and social care, influencing commissioning and involving local people in all that they do.
Next update due: 24th January
Further Reading:
Department of Health White Papers
Healthy Lives Healthy People: Our Strategy for public Health in England
www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/@dh/@en/@ps/documents/digitalasset/dh_122347.pdf
Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS
www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/@dh/@en/@ps/documents/digitalasset/dh_117794.pdf