Tracking accountability and money in the new health system – diagram

CCG_accountability

The King’s Fund published the above diagram as part of a report on Good Governance for Clinical Commissioning Groups (PDF) in the new health system. It’s one of the best diagrams we’ve seen so far explaining where accountability lies within the system, and funding. Click to see a full size version.

The whole report is worth reading for an insight into what the new groups are supposed to do, and how they are supposed to operate.

The King’s Fund also has a section on its website about the NHS reforms covering autonomy, accountability and democratic legitimacy, which provides some useful historical and other context.

Richard Vize on CCGs – notes from #reportinghealth

Carol Miers wrote up her notes on the speech by health expert Richard Vize at Help Me Investigate Health’s #reportinghealth event – we’ve reproduced them below with permission:

“GPs tend to be self employed business people, they hate NHS bureaucracy and hate being told what to do, now they are taken away from patient contact, they have to work on committees, they have their business interests compromised, they have become a cog in the bureaucracy and are subject to control from the Department of Health.”

This, added Richard Vize, opens up health reporting because there is now oversight from the Health and Wellbeing board which – given that GPs are vocal – will bring in an area of openness and debate. Continue reading

Liveblog and audio from #Reportinghealth event

Yesterday Help Me Investigate Health hosted an event: ‘GPs in Control? Reporting the New Health System‘. You can catch up on the talks through a liveblog by Duarte Romero.

Audio clips of the opening talks by Richard Vize and Darren Wright can be found tagged #reportinghealth on Audioboo.

Notes from the event were made by Carol Miers and blogged here.

Video of the panels and presentations will appear on the BBC College of Journalism YouTube channel.

Document: who’s responsible for what in health?

Monitoring health bodies - and interventions

If you want to get an overview of the different parties involved in the new health system and their roles – including some new players as well as old players with new responsibilities – a recent report from the National Quality Board‘s (NQB) is worth a look.

Quality in the Health System (PDF) was published to provide context to the establishment of Quality Surveillance Groups, but alongside the guidance there’s lots of very useful context for those getting to grips with the new system. Continue reading

Meet the CCG’s with their work cut out

Cross-posted from CCG Latest News:

They are taking control in April but some CCGs have a tougher job on their hands than others. Meet three commissioning groups with a big challenge ahead of them.

Dr Foster, which supplies intelligence and analysis on NHS services, rated three hospital trusts as being inefficient with cost and care and having a high mortality rate when compared to other NHS trusts.

They are University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust, The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust and Burton Hospitals NHS Trust.

So which CCG’s are going to be tasked with turning around these failing hospitals? We’ve compiled the data below: Continue reading

Links for January 22nd

 

Follow the money: financial incentives for CCGs

If you’re curious about what incentives might be guiding the new health system, this update from the NHS Commissioning Board provides some essential context:

“Financial incentives (quality premium) will be paid to all CCGs that improve or achieve on four national measures and three locally-agreed measures, set with Health and Wellbeing Boards. National measures include: potential years of life lost from causes considered amenable to healthcare; avoidable emergency admissions; the friends and family test; and incidence of healthcare associated infections.”

The ‘friends and family test’ is about whether individuals would recommend services to friends – in other words, a form of customer satisfaction. You can read concerns about it here, and analysis here.

Continue reading

Who to send an FOI request to if you want to know about your local clinical commissioning group

Following previous posts about how Freedom of Information requests are being handled during a period where responsibilities are passed from one part of the health service (primary care trusts) to another (clinical commissioning groups – CCGs), we’ve been working with the wonderful FOI Directory to compile a full list of email addresses for the PCT handling FOI requests for each CCG in England.

This table assumes that FOI requests are being handled by the PCT. In some cases the CCG may be ready to process FOI requests themselves. If so, the PCT should be able to inform you when you submit your FOI request.

Here’s the list – if you find anything that needs correcting or updating, please let us know. Continue reading