DH warns of 'extremely high' risk to greater Manchester savings plans

The area, which has around 20 NHS organisations including 10 primary care trusts, is responsible for £1.4bn of the £20bn savings the NHS has to make by 2015, according to an Association of Greater Manchester PCTs report.

On 19 January NHS North West ran a “deep dive” examination of the area’s quality, innovation, productivity and prevention savings plans, in the presence of DH officials.

The report said this “emphasised the view of the DH” that success in meeting the £20bn QIPP gap is “dependent much more on success in NHS North West and NHS London compared to other [strategic health authorities].”

Within the North West, greater Manchester had the biggest savings target and had made the “least progress in working collaboratively” to “deliver those transformational programmes and actions that cannot be delivered by organisations working in isolation”, it said.

The report added: “As the plans lack robustness and are not fully developed, the risk of not achieving QIPP is assessed by [the] DH as being extremely high.”

NHS North West had rated greater Manchester’s plans “red” on quality and likelihood of delivery.

The report said the main concerns were a lack of progress on areas including governance arrangements, “level 3” QIPP plans and service reconfigurations.

In addition there was an “urgent need” to establish a programme management office to coordinate QIPP work.

Association director Warren Heppolette said a second “deep dive” was planned for 1 April, when greater Manchester aims to provide “sufficient assurance” to move off a red rating.

He said improving the rating would involve “resetting the governance, resetting the programme, and establishing the team responsible for taking it forward.”

The association has asked PCT boards to agree priority workstreams for the level 3 QIPP programme, and to support proposals for revised governance arrangements and the establishment of a programme management office.

It has proposed that a new group is set up to oversee this work, including chief executives and leaders from the greater Manchester PCT cluster, the PCTs, trusts, local authorities, and commissioning consortia.

On consolidation of services, Mr Heppolette said acute trusts had argued strongly that this work would be best accomplished through partnerships of two or three providers.