News / Alliance: give CCGs support on choice

Emerging clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) should have a say in decisions over commissioning support arrangements in the run-up to the abolition of primary care trusts and full control over awarding contracts thereafter, NHS Alliance chair Michael Dixon (pictured) told Healthcare Finance.

PCT clusters have moved to assign finance staff and others to commissioning support organisations, which will provide back-office functions to CCGs and the NHS Commissioning Board from 2013. Draft Department of Health guidance published in October said CCGs would be able to choose their support from 2013, but the commissioning board would host some support units to ensure CCGs had a support safety net.

Commissioning support units would become stand-alone organisations by 2016 at the latest and could be acquired by commercial firms.

Dr Dixon said that some NHS commissioning support was good, others bad. The alliance was keen to change the notion that clusters could tell CCGs what to do. ‘We want to reverse this relationship so that CCGs are the customers and not seen as a supplicant,’ said Dr Dixon.

‘One way to bring this about is to give them a choice of support they want immediately, though we recognise this may not always be practical.’

He added: ‘I would suggest there needs to be a break clause in any contract signed with commissioning support providers now to allow for the fact that some CCGs are not in a position to make long-term decisions.’

There was no suggestion that CCGs would use such break clauses en masse, he said, but they would help shift the balance of power to the new commissioners.