The NHS Commissioning Board has issued guidance on the authorisation process for clinical commissioning groups. At the same time, it has put out more information about commissioning support services. These played no role in the 'Liberating the NHS' white paper, or the hotly contested Health and Social Care Bill, but they are destined to play a major role in how the reforms pan out on the ground.

The NHS CB has already made it clear that it expects CSSs, which could include IT and data analysis services, to be "stand-alone" organisations by 2015-16; leading the BMA to warn that essential commissioning activity could be "privatised."

The latest guidance makes it clear that even if they want to do commissioning support in-house, CCGs will be expected to identify it and put separate governance arrangements in place for it. This will do little to allay the BMA's fears.

EHI Primary Care is running a survey of CCGs, CSSs, and their IT and information plans. If you are involved in any of these areas, please take five minutes to complete the survey. All the information will, of course, be treated in confidence, but the results will be reported in EHI PC; and as a thank-you there is a chance to win £100 of Amazon vouchers.

CCG authorisation guide published

Clinical commissioning groups will be able to receive full authorisation by the end of October this year, in the first of four monthly waves of approvals that are due to be complete by 31 January 2013.

CSC and DH talks will drag on to June

CSC has failed to agree a new deal with the Department of Health for the North, Midlands and East to the deadline it outlined to investors just one month ago.

ISOFT dies but new CSC approach is born

The iSOFT brand has been formally retired and the company, now part of CSC's healthcare group, has taken the opportunity to unveil a more flexible, agile approach to the use of its products.

Graphnet and TPP agree data deal

TPP and Graphnet have announced a collaboration to enable data transfer between their systems, SystmOne and Care-Centric.

EMIS captures CIDS data

EMIS has released software that captures data for the new Community Information Data Set, which came into force at the start of the month.

Northern Devon collects CIDS on tablets

Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust has given Samsung Galaxy 7 tablets to 800 of its staff so they can use purpose-built apps to collect key information while visiting patients.

Register cuts Weston deaths in hospital

An electronic end of life register developed by a Somerset consultant has reduced the incidence of deaths in hospital to 10%.

EHI Primary Care is running a survey that will be used to inform future coverage of the plans that CCGs are making for IT support, new systems, and information and analysis services in the new NHS.

The survey contains 20 questions and should take no more than five minutes to complete. All the information provided will, of course, be treated in strict confidence; but as a thank-you for taking part there is an opportunity to enter a prize draw to win £100 of Amazon vouchers.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the EHI Primary Care editorial team.

"Don't panic; they're only having a 'pause'..."

"Both parties really want this agreement to work, and no specific roadblocks have been encountered."

Guy Hains, CSC's president of healthcare, says talks with the Department of Health about a new deal for the North, Midlands and East are going well, even though they were not concluded to an end of March deadline, and the company has "climbed out of the letter of intent agreement" that was in place at the start of last month.

EHI Primary Care

The EHI Primary Care Group is dedicated to discussions of the issues covered in EHI Primary Care's news pages.