The new NHS Commissioning Board is set to employ around 3,500 staff under the stewardship of five executive directors, with around 2,300 of these assigned to manage and work with GP-led commissioning groups, it has emerged.
GP commissioners face a huge struggle to hit targets that could affect 15% of practice income, after most hospitals failed to achieve similar goals in a ‘trial’ of the system.
Tightened rules on the make-up of clinical commissioning groups go further than the NHS Future Forum recommended and could cause problems, chairman Professor Steve Field warned.
The UK’s largest private provider of GP care has made its most significant inroad yet into commissioning after PCT managers handed it control of budgets for outpatient appointments and prescribing, Pulse can reveal.
GP commissioners could be held liable if care homes such as those operated by struggling provider Southern Cross go out of business, lawyers have warned.
Clinical senates must not hold authority over clinical commissioning groups, the BMA has said.
GPs involvement in commissioning is not an endorsement of the Health Bill, doctors have said.
The health secretary is to be given the power to intervene in “particular cases” of “significant failure” by the NHS Commissioning Board, under the newly amended Health Bill.
Senior managers implementing NHS reforms believe many of the proposed clinical commissioning groups are “unsustainable” because they are too small.
The idea behind GP commissioning consortia is intended to improve quality of care. But without the right informatrion, consortia may well find commissioning as hard as anybody else. Ardentia founder Tom Mulhern explains.
