Contents
NHS Commissioning Assembly News:
Influencing the future of the NHS Commissioning Assembly
Launch of The Learning Exchange online: an opportunity to share your experience with others
Strategic issues:
Planning Guidance and Allocations due to be published next week
Prime Minister’s Challenge Fund: Extending Access to General Practice
Who Pays? Information Governance Advice on Invoice Validation
NHS Clinical Commissioners publish Ways of Working survey results
Call to Action – Community pharmacy – a stronger role in the NHS
Commissioning Support- Mapping the market report
AQP in elective services, requalification of existing independent sector providers
GP outcomes data publication on NHS Choices
Nursing Technology Fund Launched
Operational issues:
Guidance on the Roles and Responsibilities of CCGs in preparing for and responding to an influenza pandemic
College of Emergency Medicine and National Poisons Information Service: Guideline on Antidote Availability for Emergency Departments
Health Visiting National Core Service Specification Stakeholder Engagement
Never events data published in increased detail
Other news:
CCG workforce equality and diversity
NHS England Excellence in Participation Awards 2014
Dementia support: survey of commissioners
Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) Interactive Data Tool
A quick guide to local government for health commissioners and providers
Making health and social care information accessible – your views
Events and Campaigns:
NHS Standard Contract 2014/15 training
Health and Wellbeing System improvement events
Letters to CCGs:
Personal messages from Jeremy Hunt to all NHS staff
About this bulletin
Gateway reference number: 00896
Download:ccg-bulletin-issue-48 12_12_2013FINAL
Please look out for an additional bulletin, being published on Thursday 19 December. This will be a special planning edition of the CCG Bulletin.
NHS Commissioning Assembly News
Influencing the future of the NHS Commissioning Assembly
CCGs are being asked to support research that is being undertaken in support of the new Commissioning Assembly task and finish groups.
The purpose of the research is to gather insight from key stakeholders about how they currently engage with the Assembly and to ask their views about how the Assembly might develop in the future.
The new task and finish groups, which are focusing on i) membership, constitution and ways of working and ii) communications and engagement, have been established to develop the strategic direction and ambition of the Commissioning Assembly following views generated by members at the annual event in September.
Both Assembly and non-Assembly members will be able to contribute as part of online surveys and non-members can complete their survey here. Proposed one to one interviews will also take place with key stakeholders. The outcomes will inform the work programme and strategy going forward.
Please contact us if you would like to take part in a one to one interview about the future of the Assembly.
Launch of The Learning Exchange online: an opportunity to share your experience with others
To support their development CCGs can now use the new online learning environment for CCGs, which includes The Learning Exchange and NHS Community England networking spaces.
Co-produced with CCGs and the NHS Commissioning Assembly CCG Development Working Group this is a place for CCGs to collaborate, share their learning and offer mutual support and is accessible on mobile devices, tablets and computers. This builds on the previous manual system which has enabled over 70 CCGs to connect with each other and share experiences in areas such as clinical leadership, public and member engagement and governing body effectiveness.
To date over 250 offers of support have been made, to access these or share your experience, please register and join the learning environment. We are still learning how best to support CCGs so your feedback will be invaluable,
For more information please contact Rachel Snow-Miller.
More information is also available on the NHS England website.
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Strategic issues
Planning Guidance and Allocations due to be published next week
The NHS England Board will consider Planning Guidance for 2014/15-2018/19, and financial allocations for 2014/15 -2015/16 at its next meeting on Tuesday 17 December. We hope to publish further information shortly after the Board meeting in a special edition of the CCG bulletin.
Prime Minister’s Challenge Fund: Extending Access to General Practice
On 1 October, the Prime Minister announced that there would be a new £50 million Challenge Fund to help extend access to general practice and stimulate innovative ways of providing primary care services. The Government has asked NHS England to lead the process of inviting expressions of interest and overseeing the pilots.
This is to provide advance notice that we will be publishing details of how to apply to become a pilot site and the application criteria on 18 December. This will be published on the NHS England website and further information will be included in the next CCG Bulletin.
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Who Pays? Information Governance Advice on Invoice Validation
The Secretary of State for Health has approved the NHS England application for support under Regulation 5 of the Health Service (Control of Patient Information) Regulations 2002 (Section 251 Support).
This allows CCGs and CSUs to process Personal Confidential Data (PCD) which are required for invoice validation purposes. This approval is subject to a set of conditions. The advice published on the 5th December 2013 explains these conditions and sets the actions that CCGs, CSUs and Providers must now take in order to ensure they are acting lawfully.
Who Pays can be found here
The monthly information governance bulletin can be found here . This edition- Edition eight, contains updates on the Section 251 applications, and about National Health Applications and Infrastructure Services (NHAIS)
Please let us know about any examples of good practice that you would like us to share via the bulletin.
NHS Clinical Commissioners publish Ways of Working survey results
NHS Clinical Commissioners and Ipsos MORI published the findings of the Ways of Working Survey on Thursday 5 December 2013.
This independent survey was commissioned by NHS Clinical Commissioners and asks CCGs about how NHS England is modelling the Ways of Working across its three roles of assurance, support and co-commissioning (both for primary care and specialised services). The survey looks at results at national, regional and area team level.
NHS England has welcomed the feedback, which will help the organisation develop. The findings will be considered alongside the most recent NHS England staff barometer that is also being published shortly, as well as the other pieces of work we are currently undertaking to seek feedback from national partners and patients and the public through patient representative bodies. The findings of feedback will play an important part of the NHS England organisational development plan.
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Call to Action: Community pharmacy – a stronger role in the NHS
NHS England recognises the immense value community pharmacy can contribute to patient care and health outcomes.
Community pharmacists and their teams are being invited to play an even stronger role and influence the future sustainability of the NHS by joining the debate around:
creating a ‘pharmacy first’ culture
ensuring patients get the best from their medicines
integrating community pharmacy into the patient pathway
increasing safety of dispensing
community pharmacy providing easily accessible advice on healthy living
Please take a look at the slides and resource pack and let us know your thoughts and ideas by responding to our short online feedback questionnaire, or:
get in touch with your Area Team
email comments to england.sfcpc@nhs.net
tweet us @NHSEngland using the #calltoaction
To find out a lot more, go to Improving health and patient care through community pharmacy – a call to action
Community Pharmacists supporting winter
Following publication of the End of Phase 1 Report of the Urgent and Emergency Care Review, “Community pharmacy-helping with winter pressures” provides tools and information to support local commissioning communities to make best use of community pharmacy to help relieve pressure on the local health care system this winter.
CCGs are asked to work with area teams and Urgent Care Groups locally to consider how they can best utilise community pharmacy locally to support their winter plans.
Commissioning Support- Mapping the market report
Mapping the market charts the CSU and Independent sector commissioning support market; including some of the significant changes which are already taking place as the market for CSS evolves. There is a tangible sense of momentum and improvement:
CSUs developing enhanced commercial and transformational skills and capacity;
recognition of the important contribution (in terms of additional skills and capacity) of the commercial and voluntary sector, and partnering to secure this;
active exploration – across the sectors- of approaches to secure the benefits of scale;
an increasing range of strong offers of transformational support, for example, to roll-out Outcome-Based Commissioning, new innovative Business Intelligence and analytics products and services;
This document is a valuable read to help understand commissioning support market availability, credentials and capabilities for CCGs and the wider market.
AQP in elective services, requalification of existing independent sector providers
Under the NHS Constitution patients have a legal right to a choice of any qualified provider for their first outpatient appointment. NHS Trusts and Foundation Trusts are contracted to provide such services through the NHS Standard Contract.
In 2010 Primary Care Trusts ran local any qualified provider(1) procurement exercises to contract with the independent sector providers who had previously been providing elective services through the centrally held Extended and Free Choice Network contracts, moving these providers onto the terms of the NHS Standard Contract. In the main, these contracts with the independent sector will be coming to an end in March 2014. CCGs are responsible for the re-contracting process.
To ensure that free choice of provider in elective services continues uninterrupted, procurement guidance from Monitor and NHS England to be published shortly will make clear that, where existing qualified independent sector providers are performing satisfactorily against their contracts, CCGs should award a further contract without running a further requalification procurement process for these providers. This is consistent with the approach that would be taken for awarding a contract for elective services to NHS trusts or Foundation Trusts. It would not be good value for money for commissioners to introduce a process requiring any providers who are performing satisfactorily to go through a requalification process, unless there are specific reasons for doing so, for example, because the commissioner has decided to change the quality criteria.
Under the Procurement, Patient Choice and Competition Regulations, any qualification process must be transparent and non-discriminatory; (for example any new qualification criteria would need to apply to all providers) and commissioners must not refuse to qualify any providers of elective services that satisfy the criteria. In accordance with procurement requirements, commissioners must continue to ensure that there are appropriate arrangements in place to allow potential new providers of elective services the opportunity to qualify and provide such services.
(1. Under AQP, providers deliver services at tariff with no volume guarantees).
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GP outcomes data publication on NHS Choices
As part of NHS England’s drive for more transparency and public participation, increased information about the standards and performance of primary care has been published on the NHS Choices website.
The information – which is a data set of GP outcome standards and high level indicators – includes screening rates, Quality Outcomes Framework measures, prescribing items and patient survey data. The new ‘accountability view’ published by NHS Choices pulls together a total of 201 indicators across GP practices, hospitals, local authorities and clinical commissioning groups.
For further information click here
Nursing Technology Fund Launched
In October 2012 the Prime Minister announced the establishment of a £100m Nursing Technology Fund to support nurses, midwives and health visitors to make better use of digital systems to deliver care in all settings.
NHS England is now inviting first round applications to the fund from nurses and midwives from all NHS organisations in England, including foundation, acute, community, mental health and ambulance trusts.
CCGs may wish to encourage trusts to apply to the fund, where technology can benefit them and their patients, before midday on Wednesday 15 January 2014.
Operational issues
Guidance on the Roles and Responsibilities of CCGs in preparing for and responding to an influenza pandemic
This document provides guidance to CCGs on their role in pandemic preparedness and response, and supports CCGs in identifying the high level priorities during a pandemic.
More detailed guidance, delivery models and expectations will be developed and circulated in due course as necessary.
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College of Emergency Medicine and National Poisons Information Service: Guideline on Antidote Availability for Emergency Departments
Dr Keith Ridge, Chief Pharmaceutical Officer and Professor Jonathan Benger, National Clinical Director for Urgent Care at NHS England wrote to a number of stakeholders including CCG clinical leaders on 2 December in support of the updated guidance regarding poison antidote availability produced by the College of Emergency Medicine, the National Poisons Information Service and Specialist Pharmacy Services.
Read the guidance
Health Visiting National Core Service Specification Stakeholder Engagement Monday 2 December 2013 – Monday 13 January 2014
NHS England Nursing Directorate is inviting comments and views on the health visiting service specification in order to update the specification.
For more information on the specification, and to view the supporting letter and questionnaire, please click here.
Please complete for your organisation and share with any partner organisation in your area.
Responses will be used to update the current specification and shared with all.
Deadline for return by email is on or before Monday 13 January 2014.
If you have any questions or require further assistance please contact us
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Never events data published in increased detail
As part of NHS England’s commitment to be open and transparent about patient safety incident reporting, from today we have begun publishing data on never events in greater detail, including type reported by each trust. We are one of the only healthcare systems in the world to be this open and transparent about patient safety incident reporting, particularly around never events.
The initial data covers never events reported between April and September 2013, and we have also published data on incidents across 2012/13. We will continue to publish data at the new level of detail quarterly, and then on a monthly basis from April 2014.
Read more and view the data here
Other news
CCG workforce equality and diversity
NHS England has published the results of the equality and diversity survey carried out across CCGs in July 2013.
88% of CCGs responded, giving us a useful insight into the range of disability, ethnicity, gender, religious beliefs and age groups employed.
You can see a summary document here
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NHS England Excellence in Participation Awards 2014
The NHS England Excellence in Participation Awards celebrate the outstanding contributions from people and organisations across the country who are transforming people’s lives, improving health and care services, and putting patients, service users, carers and communities at the very heart of health and care.
There are a range of award categories, all designed to recognise and celebrate outstanding achievements by people and organisations, including Participant of the Year Award, a Children and Young People’s Award for Excellence, and awards for both providers and commissioners for excellence in both public and individual participation.
Application forms can be accessed via the Participation Awards website and need to be submitted by 9am on 20 January 2014.
Winners will be announced on 3 March 2014 at the Health Innovation EXPO 2014, which is being held at the Manchester Central Exhibition and Conference Centre.
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Dementia support: survey of commissioners
A group of national organisations including NHS England are considering ways to support local commissioners to offer consistently high-quality support to people with dementia and their carers. This survey, aimed primarily at CCGs and Local Authorities, will inform this work. It asks about the support available in your area, and what action you would like to see from national partners.
To participate please click here
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Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) Interactive Data Tool
IAPT remains a key priority including delivery of the national ambition to achieve 15% access and 50% recovery rates by March 2015. NHS England has developed an interactive tool that presents these two indicators in a user-friendly format to enable commissioners monitor progress in delivering their own plans. It will initially be updated quarterly with plans for monthly reporting in the future. There remain a range of issues with the quality and completeness of the data. The attached letter from Dr Martin McShane sets out the issues in more detail alongside a number of one-off actions we would strongly encourage CCGs to undertake to ensure their access to timely and accurate information and support their commissioning plans.
A quick guide to local government for health commissioners and providers
This guide to local government from the Local Government Association (LGA) provides health colleagues with a clear and succinct guide to the role and scope of local government.
The guide will help those existing and new health partners have a better understanding of how local government and health colleagues work together in the new landscape for health improvement.
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Making health and social care information accessible – your views
Engagement activity is now live for NHS England’s project which aims to make health and social care information accessible.
Click here for details, including online surveys and versions of the patient survey in a range of different formats. There is a survey specifically seeking views from health and social care professionals and organisations, and this is your opportunity to shape the standard which will be implemented.
Make sure you have your say, and encourage others to do the same.
For further information please contact us
Events and Campaigns
NHS Standard Contract 2014/15 training
We are providing face to face training in the changes to the NHS Standard Contract and the eContract system during January 2014 as follows:
13th London (Friends House)
14th London (Friends House)
22nd Manchester (Mercure)
23rd Leeds (Crowne Plaza)
27th Birmingham (Jurys Inn)
28th Bristol (Doubletree)
Two sessions will be run on each day (09:30 – 13:00 and 13:30 – 16:30). To book a place on a session, please do so before 20 December using the following links:
London
Manchester
Leeds
Birmingham
Bristol
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Health and Wellbeing System improvement events
Three national workshops aimed at AOs, clinical leads and HWB leads, are being planned in January and February to support HWB partners to work through current challenges. CCGs and other HWB partners are invited to jointly contribute to thinking and good practice around facilitating shared ownership of a vision for their local system, the future of HWB system leadership and working across boundaries – multi-HWB collaboration.
The workshops are being held in partnership with NHS England, the Local Government Association, Department of Health and the NHS Confederation.
For further information please click here or email the NHS Confederation events team
We will also be running webinars in February 2014, details of which will follow.
Letters
Please note that letters are not routinely sent directly to CCGs unless they are urgent or confidential. Letters are ordinarily distributed via the CGG Bulletin.
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Personal messages from Jeremy Hunt to all NHS staff
The Secretary of State has recently issued two personal messages to NHS staff on the gov.uk website.
The first message follows the government’s final response to the Francis report.
Read the message here
The second message is about the long and short term challenges facing the health system.
Read the message here
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Future communications to CCGs
We have had feedback from a number of CCGs about preferred methods for communications. We will be putting in place a more systematic methodology to reach all CCGs directly. If you have any comments you would like to make on this, or indeed on the bulletin, please email the CCG bulletin mailbox.
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