Lord Warner: PCT commissioning advert blunder 'only human'

Health minister Lord Warner has labelled his department's hurried withdrawal of an advertisement to contract out primary care trust management services as 'unfortunate' ' but stood by the government's assertion of the need to bring in private sector commissioning experience.

Speaking to HSJ, Lord Warner said he agreed that managers need to see strong, co-ordinated leadership from the Department of Health amid the present upheaval and admitted it was 'unfortunate that this has happened'.

Lord Warner ordered the removal of the advert from the Official Journal of the European Union last Friday after unions and the media pointed out that it was offering companies a role in managing clinical services. However, he said managers should forgive the DoH as it is 'only human and makes mistakes like everyone else'.

Lord Warner said the advert would be reappear 'shortly' following the removal of references to clinical services. It would ask for interest from companies which PCTs could then use to 'buy in' support for their commissioning and back-office functions.

He said PCT senior management teams should welcome the opportunity the agreement will offer them to improve: 'PCTs can't expect strategic health authorities and the DoH to sit around and watch while year after year it's obvious they are unable to perform certain functions,' he said. 'This agreement will allow PCTs to buy in expertise to help them run those functions they've been unable to run themselves.'

Lord Warner confirmed that the government would be looking for companies with experience of managing large health budgets to 'weed out' small consultancies who would 'not be up to the job'.

However, union Managers in Partnership asked why the government was not concentrating on training the existing management workforce rather than damaging managers' morale still further.

National officer Jim Keegan said: 'Where is this latent commissioning capacity going to come from? We've got a lot of really good commissioning people in the NHS already. We should be concentrating on sharing that best practice and training our existing workforce.

'At a time when we're dealing with setting up new PCTs, we've suddenly got the possibility that whole swathes of that management could be outsourced. It will demoralise an already demoralised workforce.'

The redrafted OJEU advert will appear at the same time as a wider policy document on commissioning, which Lord Warner said would address policy gaps such as more detailed guidance on specialist commissioning and a 'clearer steer on how issues between commissioners and providers can be resolved'.