David Amess – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Amess on 2014-07-15.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how NHS England evaluates service specific A3 change proposals for its five-year strategy development for specialised services; when authors of those proposals will learn the outcomes of their proposals; and if he will make a statement.
Jane Ellison
NHS England established the specialised commissioning taskforce to make some immediate improvements to the way in which NHS England commissions specialised services, and to put commissioning arrangements on a stronger footing for the longer-term. The task force is not conducting a complete review of specialised commissioning, although there are some aspects of this work which will require some specific services or arrangements to be reviewed. The life of the task force was originally three months running from May to July 2014: this has now been extended to the end of October 2014.
The publication and application of the specialised services strategy have been paused while the task force undertakes its work. At this stage, NHS England is yet to confirm when the strategy will be published. However, many aspects of the work of the taskforce will contribute to taking the strategy work forward later in the year.
Information on the work on development of the mission and vision and service-level planning elements of the specialised services strategy, prior to the pause, is available on the following webpages:
www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/commissioning/spec-services/five-year-strat/mission-vision/
www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/commissioning/spec-services/five-year-strat/service-level-plan/
NHS England has advised that the A3 change proposals were a pilot process to establish how NHS England might be able to achieve multiple stakeholder involvement on future service change. Proposals that demonstrate good opportunities to increase value and contain cost have moved into the Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) programme for specialised services. Other proposals which support strategic service planning continue to be considered. Authors with proposals that do not meet the objectives of QIPP or strategic services planning will be informed within the next few weeks.
