13.06.17
CCG budgets tightening under rapidly increasing pressures, NHSCC warns
Rising inflation along with a growing population is leading to the value of the ‘CCG pound’ decreasing, NHS Clinical Commissioners (NHSCC) has today stated.
The organisation has launched an infographic that explains how even though funds being allocated to CCGs are going up, in reality CCGs are getting less money to commission care.
NHSCC also revealed that by 2019-20, what CCGs can get with the money they have will have diminished by £5.72 per person on average when compared with 2016-17.
This amounts to around £330m in terms of the national CCG budget. The organisation also warned that commissioners are being forced to deal with a number of direct and indirect pressures including an ageing population and increased demand on services.
NHSCC has reiterated a call to the government for more funding for the NHS to be urgently allocated into CCG budgets for the next two years.
"The organisation added that it was key for the government to accept that more funding was not the only thing the NHS needed, but that there needed to be greater realism for what the NHS can deliver as well as better support for local decision-makers on how to allocate resources and ring-fenced funding for transformation to ensure financial sustainability in the long term.
“CCGs have a lot of pressures on them over the next three years, among them rising demand and an ageing population with more complex needs,” said chair of the NHSCC Finance Forum Andrew Pepper. “As our analysis shows today, this is at a time where based on current plans the value of the CCG pound is shrinking.”
Pepper added that clinical commissioners were “ready and willing” to meet these challenges and transform healthcare for the better.
“Additional funding will help with this and we are calling on the government to ensure that the money promised in the lead up to the election is to be allocated into CCG budgets sooner rather than later,” he stated.
“However, we know that this will not be enough to alleviate all the pressures on the NHS – to stop the difficult decisions clinical commissioners are making sliding into impossible choices, we need realism about what the NHS can deliver, support for local decision-making and ring-fenced funding for transformation.”
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