CCG "progress" to be judged on 35 measures

The board’s planning guidance stresses that planning and decision making should be led by CCGs and health and wellbeing boards. However, it sets out 35 indicators “which the NHS Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups will use to track progress”.

Sixteen are taken from the NHS Outcomes Framework. CCGs will not be set any specific improvement targets against them, but will have to tell the commissioning board which indicators they plan to address.

There are also 19 indicators taken from the NHS constitution, which include the existing performance targets for waiting times, ambulance response and mixed sex accomodation breaches.

CCGs will be expected to focus particulary on a subset of national and locally decided indicators, which will be linked to their quality premium bonus payments. The commissioning board will also review CCGs’ finance and quality, improvement, productivity and prevention plans.

The board will develop and publish details of an ongoing assurance process for CCGs before April. It is expected the board will focus its monitoring on CCGs whose situation and plans it thinks are most risky.

The guidance says: “The approach set out in this guidance aims to strike a balance between local determination of priorities and our responsibility for oversight to ensure that statutory requirements around improving quality and financial duties are being met.”