Humber and Yorks PCTs create CSO

The Humber Cluster and NHS North Yorkshire and York are creating a single commissioning support organisation to provide IT services to clinical commissioning groups and the local branch of the NHS Commissioning Board.

The commissioning development teams from the primary care trust clusters worked on the project with the region’s eight emerging CCGs to develop an “effective, affordable offer to meet [their] needs."

Doug Scott, informatics lead for the project, said the emerging CCGs would not have the same internal support services as PCTs, so informatics and IM&T services would be provided by commissioning support organisations.

The Humber/North Yorkshire and York CSO will exist in shadow form along with the CCGs until April next year and in substantive form from April 2013.

Until then, PCTs will procure systems for the CCGs, but decisions will increasingly be made by the shadow organisations.

“The IT services that CCGs will require will be provided through the CSO. But what is different is [it won't] just provide to the new commissioning organisations but also to GP and community providers and a number of other people,” said Scott.

“Part of the reason for doing this is we need to scale up to drive improvements and efficiencies and innovation required for the transformational change and you won’t do that by bringing organisations down to smaller organisations.”

However, Scott said the move did not mean that IT services would be relocated to one, central site. “We need to keep support in the localities which is where the services are,” he said.

The clustered PCTs were working on the basis of existing staffing levels – about 100 people – and existing funding levels as that was the “only way we can approach this at this time."

How the service develops will depend on the needs of the commissioning groups. “At the end of the day, it’s down to the CCGs to decide what they want to buy and who to buy it from,” Scott added.

A recent EHI Primary Care survey showed that many emerging CCGs had yet to get IT leadership or budgets in place.

It also showed that many emerging CCGs would be willing to look to the private sector for IT support and information and analysis services. The BMA has expressed concern that Department of Health guidance would force them to do this.

However, Scott told EHI PC he was optimistic about the future of IT services in the NHS because of the increased level of GP involvement in commissioning.

“GP involvement should be seen as a positive thing. They use IT every day to support their clinical practice and are way ahead with electronic records - so they realise the potential of IT and good IT systems.”

A paper produced by the Humber Cluster says the total healthcare commissioning budget for the two organisations forming the CSO is approximately £2.5 billion, serving a population of around 1.7m.

The PCTs are also working closely with local authority colleagues to consider options for further integration of health and social care commissioning functions.

“Relationships are also being enhanced with key partners identified within the private and public sector such as the Yorkshire and Humber Public Health Observatory, to facilitate the development of an offer that supports CCGs in being able to discharge their commissioning responsibilities effectively,” it says.