22.11.16
NHSCC announces STP governance and engagement checklist
NHS Clinical Commissioners (NHSCC) has launched a new checklist to ensure that local bodies’ STPs meet desired levels of governance and engagement.
The checklist – designed for CCG lay members, councillors, volunteers and other community partners – outlines a series of questions which bodies could ask to encourage effective discussion and decision-making when designing STPs.
The questions asked by the checklist cover four key categories: governance, scrutiny and accountability; system-wide control totals (concerning financial flows); public engagement, and partnerships and collaborative working.
Susanne Hasselmann, chair of the NHSCC Lay Members Network and governing body lay member at South Eastern Hampshire CCG, said: “Through STPs we have a real chance to drive collaboration across the health and care system for the benefit of local people, but if they are to succeed it is critical that we get governance and engagement right.
“This checklist published today is a resource that will help us make sure that the delivery of STPs reflects the public voice and that proper governance is in place. This is necessary if the STPs are to achieve their aims of closing the health and wellbeing gap, the care and quality gap, and the finance and efficiency gap whilst being accountable to the patients and populations they serve.”
STPs are designed to drive system-wide reforms in place-based health systems and will require bodies to make decisions collectively. However, the plans will not change the legal responsibilities of each individual body, meaning each must still ensure that these are performed correctly.
Questions asked by the checklist include how collective decisions will be reached by the organisations involved, whether shared financial frameworks have been established and whether engagement with partner organisations in the STP decision-making process is taking place beyond CEO level.
The checklist was launched in partnership with NHS Confederation, National Voices and the Centre for Public Scrutiny at the NHSCC Lay Members Network event held in London today.
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