NHS England has published 37 nationally consistent commissioning policies as part of its role as a direct commissioner for some non-specialised services. These are policies for those services which are commissioned for serving armed forces personnel and their families, and for those in detained settings, e.g. prisons, only. They do not apply to services commissioned by Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) on behalf of their local populations.

These service-specific policies are applicable to this defined population only. The service-specific policies are interim and will be subject to full public consultation next year.

• Service specific policies

NHS England adopted, in their existing form, a number of interim generic policies to underpin its direct commissioning responsibilities. These interim policies were put in place from March 2013 and set the overall parameters within which care will be evaluated, planned and delivered.

The policies were defined as ‘interim’ as it was agreed that future policies needed more substantial patient and public engagement.

The following pages describe those policies, and the Ethical Framework underpinning them, as well as the work currently being carried out by NHS England and its stakeholders to review these documents, and to develop a comprehensive Prioritisation Framework to be used in support of future decision-making.

• Generic policies