Five top guidelines for commissioning assistance units

CSUs need to emphasis on efficient connection management and co-ordinating assets to improve overall health and healthcare, writes Leigh Griffin. Photograph: Alamy

This week marks the initial anniversary of the introduction of radically changed commissioning arrangements in the NHS.

These arrangements, which, through the creation of clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), placed clinicians in a position to lead choice-generating for neighborhood health solutions, also noticed the creation of commissioning help units (CSUs) to assistance CCGs and NHS England.

As managing director of the CSU serving Better Manchester, it truly is a helpful time to reflect on the 1st yr of operations. Here are my leading 5 reflections:

one Drop the ‘C’
We have a pivotal part in enabling the commissioners of a support to access expertise and skills at scale. As a provider of such companies, we can and need to also assistance NHS trusts, main care and the broader public sector, as we improve service co-ordination and good quality, whilst living within our implies.

As such, we are not basically ‘commissioning’ assistance units, but public sector support units.

two Integrate our efforts
In an era of resource constraint, it is critical that NHS organisations work together. We need to concentrate on effective partnership management, co-style and co-delivery to co-ordinate our use of sources and our collective commitment to enhance overall health and healthcare. Immature organisations revert to dysfunctional master-servant relationships, which we need to resist.

3 Our customer’s consumer is our customer
In searching for to strengthen our support to our clientele, primarily based on sturdy connection and account management, we must make our function clear. This is to allow our customers to enhance the wellness and healthcare of the communities they serve.

While we need to have to show worth to our having to pay clientele, it is crucial that both our employees and customers are ready to see how we are jointly improving well being and healthcare across Better Manchester.

four Flexibility and adaptability
It is evident that our clientele – CCGs, NHS England and neighborhood authorities – are seeking for consultancy and undertaking management or delivery-kind assistance to tackle both foreseen and unforeseen short-term issues.

This demands CSUs to be in a position to flex and adapt to these needs, as properly as operating closely with our consumers to foresee and speedily respond.

We aim to strengthen our capabilities and techniques of working to be a lot more responsive, constructing a powerful public sector consultancy skill base and, hopefully, minimizing the public sector’s demand for commercial sector support.

5 Efficiency
We must and will try to be much more productive to demonstrate greatest value to our consumers. Recognising the two the considerable monetary challenges dealing with the public sector and the steady emergence of a market place for commissioning help, we have to be reasonable and aggressive if we are to grow sustainable assistance to the public sector.

Locally, our programs to merge with Cheshire and Merseyside CSU reflect this need, as nicely as the opportunity to strengthen our service and ability base, and entice potential partners.

In summary, it truly is been a tough but productive initial 12 months. CSUs have discovered to be companies, recognising the imperatives of value and relationships. We now need to embed ourselves as providers of decision in a potential market for assistance solutions, demonstrating the actual skills, skills and expertise that the NHS can offer.

Leigh Griffin is managing director of Better Manchester CSU

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Five top guidelines for commissioning assistance units