Additional planning guidance documents published
Today the NHS Commissioning Board has published a number of documents to further support clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and the wider NHS in planning for 2013/14. These documents follow the publication earlier this week of Everyone Counts: Planning for Patients 2013/14 which outlined the incentives and levers that will be used to improve services from April 2013 – the first year of the new NHS, where improvement is driven by clinical commissioners.
Supporting Planning 2013/14 for CCGs, the technical guidance for Everyone Counts: Planning for Patients 2013/14, describes the processes that will be used to support planning for the next financial year. The aim of the document is to support CCGs in ensuring that every plan is as strong as it can be by designing an approach that aims to strike a balance between local determination of priorities and the NHS Commissioning Board’s responsibility for oversight.
Other supporting documents include a near-final draft of the 2013/14 NHS standard contract – the responsibility of which has passed from the Department of Health to the NHS Commissioning Board this year. The contract is for use by commissioners when commissioning healthcare services (other than those commissioned under primary care contracts) and is adaptable for use for a broad range of services and delivery models.
Further documents to support the CCG Outcomes Indicator Set are now also available. These include a table setting out the relationship of the CCG Outcomes Indicator Set with the NHS Outcomes Framework, technical guidance on the CCG Outcomes Indicator Set, setting out definitions of indicators and data sources and a summary factsheet.
Also of interest to CCGs is guidance on the Quality Premium. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 gives the NHS CB powers to reward CCGs for the quality of services they commission, associated outcomes for patients and reductions in inequalities. The Quality Premium will be set at up to £5 per head for each CCG and can be spent as CCGs wish, provided it can be shown to improve services for patients.
Finally, draft guidance on the Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN) payment framework has been made available. The CQUIN framework enables commissioners to reward excellence by linking a proportion of a provider’s income to the achievement of local and national quality improvement goals. Some of these will be local priorities and some national, such as improving the care of people with dementia.
All these documents can be found on the Everyone Counts section of the NHS Commissioning Board website.
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5 comments
Please can you confirm if the Model Collaborative Commissioning Agreement can include Local Authority signatories?
Hi Ciara
Thank you for your comment.
The information given in this response has been updated in March 2013.
Please find the updated information below:
CCGs may wish to enter into collaborative agreements or Memorandums of Understanding with Local Authorities where they wish to collaborate in relation to initiatives to improve and encourage integrated working without delegating commissioning responsibility to each other. Depending upon what any such agreements are intended to achieve, they may be stated to be legally binding or non-legally binding. The NHSCB has not developed a template agreement for this purpose.
Where CCGs and Local Authorities wish to delegate functions to one another for the purposes of Section 75 partnership arrangements, agreements should be entered into in accordance with the requirements of the NHS Act 2006 (as amended) and the NHS Bodies and Local Authorities Partnership Regulations 2000 (as amended). CCGs have a duty to promote integration of services where this will improve quality or reduce inequalities – and will wish to consider the scope for section 75 agreements in this context. This could be a key part of the joint health and wellbeing strategies that CCGs develop with local authorities and other partners on Health and Wellbeing Boards.
Kind regards
Simon
Digital Communications Officer
NHS Commissioning Board
Thank you for clarifying that if only one national indicator applies to the Trust the weighting should be 0.125%. In the case of Mental Health Trusts the one applicable national CQUIN is Improvement against the NHS Safety Thermometer. Our local provider Trust is eligible for indicator 2 (the improvement CQUIN) but the very low numbers of pressure ulcers, UTIs and falls make it difficult to set meaningful improvement targets. If the Trust decides not to sign up to this national CQUIN, do they lose the opportunity to claim the 0.125% or can we agree to reassign the 0.125% to locally agreed CQUINs?
Hi Ciara
Thank you for your comment. Commissioner and provider have the opportunity to set what they feel to be reasonable improvement trajectories for the NHS Safety Thermometer CQUIN, but, if the Trust decides not to sign up to this national CQUIN, they do lose the opportunity to claim the 0.125%.
Kind regards
Simon
Digital Communications Officer
NHS Commissioning Board