SHAs to be responsible for fair commissioning
Strategic health authorities will be responsible for ensuring primary care trust commissioners deal fairly with NHS and private sector providers in England, the Department of Health revealed last week.
As part of the Government’s response to the consultation on the
future regulation of health and adult social care, the DoH says that
SHAs and PCTs should work together to promote choice and competition.
They must also, it adds, ensure that a range of good quality services
are available and that different types of provider, including NHS bodies
and independent sector providers, are treated fairly.
“If a provider believes it has evidence that a PCT has not exercised
this responsibility appropriately, it will be able to complain in the
first
instance to the PCT,” the DoH says. “If it is dissatisfied,
it may ask the relevant strategic health authority to consider the complaint.
The SHA will be expected to take action if the provider’s claim
is substantiated.”
Graham Phillips, a community pharmacist in Hertfordshire who has experienced
some difficulties in having services commissioned by PCTs, said that
PCTs need to focus on “patient-based commissioning” rather
than “practice-biased commissioning”.
“The opportunity must be taken to put the patient at the centre,
to re-engineer the patient pathway to be as smooth as possible and to
ensure that all
the potential providers get a fair crack of the whip,” he said.
Transparent governance needs to be instated, he said, and it must ensure
that “patients’ needs, not doctors’ wallets” come
first.
“The NHS has enjoyed huge extra funding gains in recent years,” he
commented. “The mistake has been to allow one self-interested professional
group to dominate. This must stop. PCTs must be empowered and skilled
up to commission properly. SHAs must have the power and the obligation
to see that the system is fair and not abused,” he added.
DoH will advise SHAs
The Government says it will work with PCTs and SHAs to ensure their
decisions are fair, transparent and well informed. When competition
issues cannot be resolved locally, a panel of experts established
by the DoH will provide independent advice to SHAs, which they
will be expected to follow.
SHAs and the new health care regulator,
the Care Quality Commission, will be responsible for assessing
the performance of commissioners and service providers.
The response also reveals that the Care Quality Commission will
not take on the Healthcare Commission’s current role in
dealing with second-stage NHS complaints, because the DoH does
not believe
that the investigation of complaints from individual patients sits
easily with the functions of a regulatory body.
The Government is
aiming to establish the new regulator in October 2008 and for it
to take on responsibility for the regulation of health and adult
social care the following April. |
|
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
Acrobat
Reader