The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 278 No 7446 p387
7 April 2007

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No single clinical group can dominate new PECs

New Department of Health guidance on primary care trust professional executive committees (PECs) says that their membership should be locally determined with practising clinical professionals in the majority. It adds that no one clinical group should dominate.

The guidance, which is to be implemented by 1 October, recommends that all members should be appointed after being interviewed against defined roles set out in a job description, and they should be made on the basis of suitability against a person specification and competencies. No member should be appointed to represent professional interests.

The guidance says that PECs and practice-based commissioning (PBC) represent two different but mutually supportive parts of clinical engagement and leadership that will be vital if PCTs are to commission high quality and effective services for patients. It expects PECs to set the overarching framework, direction and environment for PBC.

Publishing the guidance last week, health minister Andy Burnham said: “Whitehall will do less dictating on what these committees should look like. PCTs will be free to decide how many members they need to have and the NHS will be able to bring in extra members to tackle specific challenges. With the introduction of [PBC] and the delegation of budgets there needs to be a stronger emphasis on commissioning.”

Paul Duell, interim PEC co-chairman at North East Essex PCT, said that the guidance showed that the DoH had listened during the consultation process on the new guidance (PJ, 2 December 2006, p662).

“The guidance is very encouraging for pharmacists and all clinicians,” he said. “They’ve recognised that PCTs are working differently.”

Mr Duell said that one of the key changes is that what amounted to an election process has been replaced by a competency-based system.

“This is very encouraging for pharmacy and pharmacists,” he said. “They’re in an excellent position to take these posts up.”

Mr Duell said that at Suffolk PCT, the new system had resulted in the appointment of two community pharmacists to a six-member PEC. One of the pharmacists, Dhiren Bhatt, is a co-chairman of the PEC.