Commissioning

All patients who have contracted hepatitis via a blood transfusion or blood products should receive the following care: Those bodies responsible for commissioning hepatology services in each of the home …

We strongly endorse the emphasis placed on the quality of NHS services that began with the Darzi review, High Quality Care for All, and gathered importance with the response to …

Commissioners should require access to all complaints information as and when complaints are made, and should receive complaints and their outcomes on as near a real-time basis as possible. This …

GPs need to undertake a monitoring role on behalf of their patients who receive acute hospital and other specialist services. They should be an independent, professionally qualified check on the …

The commissioner is entitled to and should, wherever it is possible to do so, apply a fundamental safety and quality standard in respect of each item of service it is …

In addition to their duties with regard to the fundamental standards, commissioners should be enabled to promote improvement by requiring compliance with enhanced standards or development towards higher standards. They …

The NHS Commissioning Board and local commissioners should develop and oversee a code of practice for managing organisational transitions, to ensure the information conveyed is both candid and comprehensive. This …

The NHS Commissioning Board and local commissioners must be provided with the infrastructure and the support necessary to enable a proper scrutiny of its providers' services, based on sound commissioning …

Commissioners must have access to the wide range of experience and resources necessary to undertake a highly complex and technical task, including specialist clinical advice and procurement expertise. When groups …

In selecting indicators and means of measuring compliance, the principal focus of commissioners should be on what is reasonably necessary to safeguard patients and to ensure that at least fundamental …

Commissioners – not providers – should decide what they want to be provided. They need to take into account what can be provided, and for that purpose will have to …

Commissioners need, wherever possible, to identify and make available alternative sources of provision. This may mean that commissioning has to be undertaken on behalf of consortia of commissioning groups to …

Commissioners must have the capacity to monitor the performance of every commissioning contract on a continuing basis during the contract period: Such monitoring may include requiring quality information generated by …

Commissioners should be entitled to intervene in the management of an individual complaint on behalf of the patient where it appears to them it is not being dealt with satisfactorily, …

Consideration should be given to whether commissioners should be given responsibility for commissioning patients' advocates and support services for complaints against providers.

Commissioners should be accountable to their public for the scope and quality of services they commission. Acting on behalf of the public requires their full involvement and engagement: There should …

Commissioners need to be recognisable public bodies, visibly acting on behalf of the public they serve and with a sufficient infrastructure of technical support. Effective local commissioning can only work …

Commissioners should have powers of intervention where substandard or unsafe services are being provided, including requiring the substitution of staff or other measures necessary to protect patients from the risk …

Commissioners should have contingency plans with regard to the protection of patients from harm, where it is found that they are at risk from substandard or unsafe services.

The NHS Commissioning Board should ensure the development of metrics on quality and outcomes of care for use by commissioners in managing the performance of providers, and retain oversight of …

The NHS Commissioning Board together with Clinical Commissioning Groups should devise enhanced quality standards designed to drive improvement in the health service. Failure to comply with such standards should be …

Contractors providing outsourced services should also be required to abide by these requirements and to ensure that staff employed by them for these purposes do so as well. These requirements …