Health Scrutiny and Practice‐based Commissioning: Contradictory or Complementary?

Abstract

The Local Government Act (2000) introduced new Overview and Scrutiny Committees, composed of elected non‐executive councillors, that can respond to proposals from the NHS for changes in services and also set their own agendas for more detailed scrutiny, including of the NHS. Limited capacity has meant that the focus of scrutiny has often been on statutory consultations from the NHS, service provision, NHS organisations and only occasionally on wider issues. However, it is commissioning that is officially seen as the main vehicle for shaping NHS services, so health scrutiny ought logically to address itself more to commissioning than to investigating providers. Practice‐based Commissioning (PBC) was introduced in 2004 with the aim of engaging front‐line clinicians in commissioning health care, though most such commissioning is being undertaken by groups of practices joining together to form consortia, rather than by individual GPs. In principle, this makes it more practicable for health scrutiny to include PBC, but consortia are not statutory bodies and cannot be compelled to participate. We suggest ways in which this omission might be addressed.

Citation

Coleman, A., Harrison, S. and Checkland, K. (2008), "Health Scrutiny and Practice‐based Commissioning: Contradictory or Complementary?", Journal of Integrated Care, Vol. 16 No. 5, pp. 18-21. https://doi.org/10.1108/14769018200800036