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Background

In July 2010, the Department of Health published the white paper Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS. Amongst other things, this heralded plans to abolish Primary Care Trusts and hand over responsibility for most healthcare commissioning to new GP-led Consortia.

The Oldham GPs, as Commissioning for Oldham Group ('COG') began working up plans to develop into the GP Commissioning Consortia (GPCC) which, at the time of the Commission are being advanced as a pathfinder starting to take on responsibilities from the PCT.

From the beginning, COG has emphasised the importance of involving the public in their work at all stages and all levels. The GP's are especially mindful of:

  • the tremendous responsibility of spending hundreds of millions of pounds of the public's money
  • the need to gain and maintain the confidence and support of the public as commissioners as well as clinicians
  • the challenging financial position the NHS will face in the coming years

To begin work to develop public involvement, COG enlisted the help of the PCT's small Engagement Team. An outline work programme was agreed and funding was secured from the Department of Health. The first piece of work arising from the plan was designed to begin to develop a public mandate - ensuring that GP Commissioners were seen by the public to be acting fairly.

The Plan for the Health Commission was firmed up as a Citizens Jury.  Oldham LINk were invited on-board to co-run the event. A (reasonably) reflective sample of 12 members of the public were recruited, the sessions designs and suitable experts identified and press ganged!

The outputs of the Commission are:

  • a series of recomendations to guide COG on acting fairly - not in what they should do, but how they should do it.
  • a template for other GPCCs to run similar events reflecting the Oldham learning
  • 12 members of the public who are now experts on the subject of fairness in the NHS who we hope will go onto be become involved in a number of ways.

There are no plans as yet to run another Commission though it is now part of the public involvement 'toolkit' at the disposal of COG.  Next steps on developing public engagement will include developing online patient communities, testing engagement approaches with patients with musculoskeletal conditions, and developing the skills of GPs in engaging patients at practice level.