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Hunt and Burnham to speak at The Commissioning Show

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt MP and shadow health secretary Andy Burnham MP – the current favourite to be next Labour leader – have both confirmed that they are to speak at The Commissioning Show in London next month. The show, for which NHE is the media partner, is part of the even bigger Health+Care event.

A spokesperson for the show said: “The Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt is back at the helm of the NHS and with a turbulent voyage ahead. Don’t miss his opening address at The Commissioning Show where he will lay out the government's vision for transformed out-of-hospital care, a seven-day NHS and a new deal for general practice.

“This is your chance to engage in Q&A with the secretary of state about his health policies and priorities; to gain clearer insight into how the new government will support the NHS to improve over the next five years and to make your views heard at the highest level.

“Also find out how the Rt Hon Andy Burnham, the frontrunner and 'change candidate' for Labour leadership, would 'change' his party's approach to the NHS and social care.”

The show has more than 350 speakers, including: Ian Dodge (national director, commissioning strategy, NHS England); Samantha Jones (director of new models of care, NHS England); Dr Julia Simon (programme director, co-commissioning of primary care and head of commissioning policy unit, NHS England); Paul Rice (head of technology strategy, NHS England); and Geraldine Strathdee (national clinical director for mental health, NHS England).

Ralph Collett, managing director of CloserStill Media’s Medical Group, recently wrote for NHE and our sister title PSE to discuss the world of healthcare commissioning and the upcoming Health+Care Show. His article is reproduced below:

Commissioning entered the health lexicon under the previous administration as a means of expressing a new and more patient-centric way of designing and delivering healthcare. Up until then we largely ‘procured’ or ‘contracted’, but in 2007 we moved towards not just commissioning, but World Class Commissioning. This was designed to give primary care trusts the skills they needed to be at the forefront of delivering health improvements to all parts of the local population.

At its heart lay the principles of quality, innovation, productivity and prevention. Commissioners were encouraged to view World Class Commissioning as a critical means of embedding at local level the skills, capabilities and competencies required to respond to the future health challenges.

A few years and a structural revolution later, arguably little has changed. The NHS still struggles to meet the challenges driven by an ageing population and lifestyle driven long-term conditions. The imperative for quality, innovation, prevention and productivity is indisputable if we want to find new ways of making people better and keeping well in a world where resource is not limitless, but demand appears to be.

But has commissioning proved to be the elixir we were promised? Certainly it has grown and developed, supported by the introduction of GP consortia, which morphed into clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), with new architecture swiftly built around them, including the quick-to-merge commissioning support units (CSUs), clinical senates and academic health science networks. Some will survive, others may not.

If we take the success of The Commissioning Show, part of Health+Care, which launched in 2011 and has since evolved in stature to reflect the NHS’s own evolvement, as a barometer we can be pretty confident that commissioning is alive and kicking. However, as health challenges become ever more complex, and the system ever more fragmented, an event that focuses on commissioning alone is of no real use to commissioners. To be of real value, they need to be able to access information and resources across the entire system in order to try and knit back together some of the fragmentation.

Perhaps due to its constantly evolving nature, Commissioning and Health+Care have grown to be the UK health calendar’s must-attend event for more than 7,000 commissioners and health and social care providers across Europe. Known for its thought-leadership, unrivalled showcase for innovation and as a great place to network, it is unique in its approach, delivering six shows that reflect the six key strands that are central to the future of health and social care – Commissioning, Care Commissioning, Home Care, Integrated Care, Residential Care and Public Health – giving commissioners and providers access to a whole raft of system support in one convenient place.

We have listened carefully to what our delegates want and The Commissioning Show and Health+Care now deliver a programme that combines thought leadership – it doesn’t matter who will be saying it post-election, they’ll be saying it here – with practical sessions. We are one of the most significant investors in the NHS through our continuous professional development for many thousands of NHS staff. An unintended consequence of delivering an event at such scale is that it can become difficult to navigate, so this year we are introducing an innovative approach via a personalised plan based on areas of interest, organisation and job title.

This means we can provide our delegates with two days that are highly tailored to their particular role and objectives. We are also reaching out into secondary care for the first time to help primary and secondary colleagues to work together and break down the dissolution of historic boundaries between secondary and primary care, as is advocated in NHS England’s Five Year Forward View exclusive Engagement Zone.

The Commissioning Show 2015 will incorporate Strategic Clinical Network, GP system, Lead Provider Framework and Technology zones, plus a focus on the new Vanguard providers. There will be fewer ‘talk and chalk’ sessions and more opportunity to interact directly with other attendees, whether speaker, fellow delegate or exhibitor.

New Knowledge Exchange sessions will offer a deeper learning experience, and there will be new opportunities for delegates to step out of the lecture theatres and engage in focused, in-depth discussion around shared challenges.

It is less than 10 years since we first started thinking about commissioning as a mechanism to address the most serious health management challenges we have ever faced. As the health world watches Manchester and the Vanguard sites closely, we too will be observing with interest to see how our current six key strands thread together to support a continually emergent sector.

Health+Care takes place on 24-25 June 2015 at ExCel, London.