ICBs have been given until next month to submit their plans for neighbourhood health services to NHS England.
Chief executive Sir Jim Mackey told ICBs to outline how they intend to ‘build out your strategic commissioning narratives’ over the next three years, including neighbourhood care plans, before 15 May.
It also gives ICBs an opportunity to request changes to ‘financial flows and/or payment systems’ to help meet their ambitions.
The letter, published on 1 April, said: ‘What we absolutely need to avoid is the risk that, while we are rightly focused on making 2026/27 a success, we miss maximising the opportunity the multi-year planning process gives us to stretch ourselves over the medium term and really bring the benefits of the 10-Year Health Plan to life.
‘So, to enhance and augment the plans that you have submitted, we would like you to build out your strategic commissioning narratives to describe better how, as commissioners and providers, you intend to do this together.’
Sir Jim said the plans should emphasise ‘strategic commissioning means in your local system and how you intend to develop this over the next three years; how you intend to develop neighbourhood care, what your strategic ambition is and how this links to your key challenges; whether you would like us to agree changes to financial flows and/or payment systems to help deliver this and, specifically, what these changes are’.
Attached guidance advises commissioners to focus on how they will meet ‘key areas’ of improvement in their plans, including expansion of the NHS App, advice and guidance (A&G), and use of technology for GP-related tasks such transcribing technology to record consultation notes.
It identifies ‘technology‑enabled productivity improvements’ as a ‘key area’ to focus on, alluding to ‘expanding the deployment of Ambient Voice Technology’ (AVT).
ICBs must submit these plans in ‘a single document’ by 15 May, the letter added.
In November, NHS England published a ‘strategic commissioning’ framework urging ICBs to take a ‘bold’ approach to planning services including decommissioning services from GP practices and looking ‘beyond traditional healthcare providers’.
The framework outlined NHS England’s plans for ICBs to move to a ‘strategic’ commissioning role – which it defines as planning ‘over the longer term’ to ‘improve population health, reduce health inequalities and improve equitable access to consistently high-quality healthcare’.
NHS trusts can take commissioning responsibilities for primary care under the Government’s new neighbourhood health model, the Department of Health and Social Care has confirmed.
A new neighbourhood health framework revealed that ICBs will commission ‘designated trusts’ to hold integrated health organisation (IHO) contracts.
A version of this story was first published on Healthcare Leader’s sister title Pulse.
