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Dear stakeholder
From July the Health and Care Act 2022 will legally establish 42 Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) - partnerships of organisations that come together to plan and deliver joined up health and care services to improve the lives of people in their area. Each ICS will have an Integrated Care Board (ICB) - a statutory NHS organisation responsible for developing a plan for meeting the health needs of the population, managing the NHS budget and arranging for the provision of health services in the ICS area. When ICBs are legally established, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) will be abolished. You can find more information on these changes here.
The Act also enables NHS England and NHS Improvement to arrange for its functions to be delegated or jointly delivered with ICBs and so this week, NHS England and NHS Improvement has sent a letter to ICBs and NHS Trusts outlining the next steps for the delegation of some direct commissioning functions to ICBs. As part of this, we have also published a Roadmap setting out the direction of travel towards more integrated commissioning of specialised services with local commissioners, which the Health and Care Act 2022 will now enable.
Delegating specialised services where appropriate will enable the delivery of more joined-up care for patients, improving their experiences and outcomes from treatment. Services will only be delegated where there are likely to be benefits from integrated commissioning and only when ICBs are ready. NHS England will continue to set national policies and standards and will remain ultimately accountable for the commissioning of all specialised services.
The Roadmap sets out which specialised services may be both suitable and ready for greater local leadership from April 2023 so that patients can benefit from the focus of ICBs on managing their local population’s health and the opportunity of integrating the specialised elements of pathways alongside primary, community and secondary care. There are a number of services, including all highly specialised services, where the benefits of integrated commissioning would be more limited and so they will continue to be directly commissioned by NHS England and NHS Improvement.
We are keen to engage further with stakeholders as we move forward in finalising the assessment of service appropriateness for delegation and as we develop the detailed model and infrastructure needed to support the move to more integrated commissioning. For more details or to get involved you can contact the Future Commissioning Model Programme team at fcmp.england@nhs.net.
With kind regards,
Future Commissioning Model Programme
Specialised Commissioning
NHS England and NHS Improvement
w: www.england.nhs.uk and www.improvement.nhs.uk
Skipton House | 80 London Road | London | SE1 6LH
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