By Richard Staines
24 June 2010
Passing commissioning powers and budget responsibilities down to GPs has the potential to improve care, but only if it is done slowly and carefully, leading health bodies have said.
A group of six organisations, including the Nuffield Trust and King’s Fund think-tanks and the Royal College of GPs, has produced a report showing how government can give GPs real power and responsibility for commissioning in the NHS.
According to Dr Judith Smith, head of policy at the Nuffield Trust, GP commissioning ‘is likely to be the centrepiece of the coalition government’s NHS reforms’.
The government will publish its proposals for GP commissioning in a white paper, expected in July.
Giving GPs budgets for commissioning: what needs to be done?, published on June 23, said issues such as determining the appropriate population size for GP commissioning groups, ensuring commissioners are held to account by the patients and the public and performance assessment all need to be resolved.
Payment systems must also be reviewed and the changeover to the new system must be managed properly to ensure quality and financial control is maintained, the report added.
It warned that there had been evidence from both the UK and overseas that convincing some GPs to adopt the system could be a hurdle.
Smith said: ‘[GP commissioning] has much potential to engage GPs in decisions about how local services are planned, help shift care out of hospitals, and reverse the upward trend in avoidable hospital admissions.
‘But the scale of the challenge should not be underestimated – many previous reforms have struggled to win the support and engagement of GPs and this will again be a crucial issue, as will breaking down the Berlin Wall between GPs and hospital specialists to get them to work closely together in managing budgets.’
Professor Steve Field, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said he believed GPs were ‘best placed’ to commission community services.
Field added: ‘We already commission at the level of the individual patient, and by practices coming together as federations, we will be able to assess the health needs of the wider population, and then by careful planning secure the best quality of health services and health improvement services for that population within the available resources.’
24 June 2010
Passing commissioning powers and budget responsibilities down to GPs has the potential to improve care, but only if it is done slowly and carefully, leading health bodies have said.
A group of six organisations, including the Nuffield Trust and King’s Fund think-tanks and the Royal College of GPs, has produced a report showing how government can give GPs real power and responsibility for commissioning in the NHS.
According to Dr Judith Smith, head of policy at the Nuffield Trust, GP commissioning ‘is likely to be the centrepiece of the coalition government’s NHS reforms’.
The government will publish its proposals for GP commissioning in a white paper, expected in July.
Giving GPs budgets for commissioning: what needs to be done?, published on June 23, said issues such as determining the appropriate population size for GP commissioning groups, ensuring commissioners are held to account by the patients and the public and performance assessment all need to be resolved.
Payment systems must also be reviewed and the changeover to the new system must be managed properly to ensure quality and financial control is maintained, the report added.
It warned that there had been evidence from both the UK and overseas that convincing some GPs to adopt the system could be a hurdle.
Smith said: ‘[GP commissioning] has much potential to engage GPs in decisions about how local services are planned, help shift care out of hospitals, and reverse the upward trend in avoidable hospital admissions.
‘But the scale of the challenge should not be underestimated – many previous reforms have struggled to win the support and engagement of GPs and this will again be a crucial issue, as will breaking down the Berlin Wall between GPs and hospital specialists to get them to work closely together in managing budgets.’
Professor Steve Field, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said he believed GPs were ‘best placed’ to commission community services.
Field added: ‘We already commission at the level of the individual patient, and by practices coming together as federations, we will be able to assess the health needs of the wider population, and then by careful planning secure the best quality of health services and health improvement services for that population within the available resources.’
