NHS Clinical Commissioners has released a checklist to “support effective governance” when implementing sustainability and transformation plans.
The checklist, which was launched in partnership with NHS Confederation, National Voices and the Centre for Public Scrutiny, aims to help commissioners work through key governance and accountability challenges.
NHS Clinical Commissioners has released a checklist to “support effective governance” when implementing sustainability and transformation plans.
The checklist, which was launched in partnership with NHS Confederation, National Voices and the Centre for Public Scrutiny, aims to help commissioners work through key governance and accountability challenges.
In a statement NHSCC said: “STPs provide an important opportunity to drive system-wide collaboration and require collective decision making but do not change the statutory responsibilities of individual organisations, raising important questions on how governance and engagement can be managed.”
The questions cover four key categories including governance, scrutiny and accountability, and advise commissioners to ask how collective decision will be reached, “given that STPs have no legal accountabilities”.
The other categories include system-wide control totals, 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.”
The new checklist will also be useful for CCG lay members, provider non-executive directors, councillors, the voluntary sector, and other community partners.
