Attention in the South East turns to QIPP

NHS West Essex’s plan involves £24.3m of QIPP savings, with around £9.6m earmarked to be taken out of planned care and £5.3m from urgent care. But the PCT has identified achievement on QIPP to be a “risk”.

NHS Norfolk is looking for £33m of savings from QIPP, with the “headline workstreams” being frail older people, referral management and pathway development. NHS Suffolk has said its financial plan for 2011-12 is “highly dependent” on delivery of QIPP projects totalling £21.8m, of which £19.3m will be locally led.

In the South Central region, NHS Berkshire West confidently asserted in its March board papers that it has consistently made surpluses, and will repeat the feat this year despite being “now the lowest funded PCT in the country per head of population”.

To meet the challenge of a population that is “keen to access all available healthcare”, the PCT says it must make QIPP savings of over £15m next year. This plan relies on reducing all non-elective activity by 5 per cent.

The plan’s “most important” scheme was its “community rapid response and reablement” programme to prevent emergency admissions and readmissions. It is hoped this will save more than £2.5m.

NHS Berkshire West has set out its plan to begin delegating commissioning to GPs, with £658m, about 80 per cent of the budget, to be divided between the four consortia in the area using the practice based commissioning “fair shares” methodology.