Greg Mulholland – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Greg Mulholland on 2015-12-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what mechanisms his Department has for quality assurance of the work of Solutions for Public Health.

George Freeman

It is the responsibility of NHS England to quality assure the work of Solutions for Public Health (SPM).

NHS England has a service level agreement in place with SPM and this sets out the terms under which stand-alone clinical evidence reviews are conducted and completed. The agreed methodology is based on best practice within the health sector and the collective experience of experts in public health and clinical effectiveness.

As additional assurance, draft evidence reviews are tested prior to their completion with members of NHS England’s clinical reference groups, which include clinical and patient experts relevant to the service or speciality concerned from across England. Evidence reviews are also now shared as part of both informal stakeholder testing and formal public consultation alongside the draft clinical commissioning policies that they have informed.