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Mills & Reeve can help you manage the changes and challenges flowing from the Health and Social Care Act

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This article was part of the Commissioning Legal Adviser channel, in association with Mills & Reeve. The channel is no longer being updated.

Health and Social Care Commissioning

We advise and support numerous health sector clients including many commissioning clients. Our current focus is to help you to manage the changes and challenges flowing from the Health and Social Care Act. We have corporate and commercial strength and depth to enable us to make sure you will operate successfully in the current challenging financial landscape.

Our commissioning, governance, procurement and workforce specialists are currently working with clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and commissioning support units, Primary Care Trust clusters and Strategic Health Authorities to ensure the successful transition of commissioning functions.

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Please visit our Mills & Reeve’s Health Commissioning Portal– this hosts an easy-to-navigate, comprehensive array of online guidance including FAQs , resources and tools aimed at anyone with a role or an interest in clinical commissioning.

Visit our blog for the latest news about legal issues affecting clinical commissioning.

How we can help

We have supported our health clients through every NHS reorganisation for the last three decades including GP fund holding, PCT and specialised commissioning, Transforming Community Services, PCT and SHA clustering, GP consortia morphing into CCG pathfinders, shadow CCGs and now CCGs awaiting authorisation.

Our recent advice has included:

Legal structures for delegating commissioning responsibilities within and between PCTs, CCGs and local authorities
Compliance with procurement law and policy including the latest commissioning guidance
When and how to use procurement for commissioning
Contractual arrangements for clinical commissioning
Developing an HR framework enabling PCTs to support clinical commissioners
CCG constitutions and corporate governance frameworks
Setting up / contracting for commissioning support units
The interaction between CCGs, the NHS Commissioning Board and Monitor (as sector regulator)
Acting for PCT commissioning bodies in relation to transfers of property to aspirant community foundation Trusts and PropCo and acting for aspirant community foundation trusts

Our clients for this work are typically PCT clusters and aspirant CCGs but we also advise the independent sector on NHS commissioning and commissioning support units.

This is novel work and our approach is to use the flexibilities within the system to design arrangements that are efficient, effective, economical and appropriate to your needs. It is exciting to be involved in groundbreaking projects that are implementing such significant change in the NHS.

We have drawn together an inter-disciplinary team to guide you through the challenging and exciting times ahead. You can find more information about our lawyers on the meet our team page on the Health Commissioning Portal.

About us

We are one of the leading legal advisers to the health sector, with over 100 dedicated health lawyers (including 12 specialist health partners spread across all relevant disciplines) advising public and independent health sector bodies. We are ranked in the top tiers for health in Chambers UK and the Legal 500, which are the main independent directories of legal expertise.

Our clients include over 100 NHS, regulatory, voluntary and independent sector healthcare organisations. Our NHS clients include the Department of Health, strategic health authority clusters, special health authorities (including NHS Blood and Transplant), PCT clusters, CCGs, commissioning support units, ambulance trusts, mental health trusts and both aspiring and established foundation trusts.

We are growing our experience in the independent and voluntary sectors too. Recently, we acted for Virgin Healthcare in relation to the transfer of community services by NHS Surrey and we have been appointed to the panel acting for Macmillan.

The range of entities that we act for in the health sector ensures that we understand the big picture.

Clients praise our health groups’ “superb strength in depth” and regard us as “responsive and professional, providing focused advice against pressurised timescales”.

You can find out more about our health sector work by visiting our main website, which gives details of our legal services for the health sector.

Training

We offer bespoke training on structures, relationships and governance for CCGs and wider issues for CCGs such as procurement law and NHS procurement policy, competition and contestability, along with training on related skills (such as contract negotiation and contract management) and issues such as managing legal spend. We can also provide training on any other legal issues which may affect CCGs.

You can find out more about our health sector work by visiting our main website, which gives details of our legal services for the health sector.

Contact us

The Health Commissioning Portal is published by Mills & Reeve LLP. We are here to help if you have any clinical commissioning queries. We also welcome your comments and feedback.