Understanding primary care co-commissioning: Uptake, development, and impacts

This report presents the findings from a study following the development of Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) in England. This is the third phase of the project, which aims to understand the ways in which CCGs are responding to their new primary care co-commissioning responsibilities from April 2015, providing feedback to NHSE supporting CCGs going through the approval process.

The study provides detailed evidence about the experiences of CCGs as they took on delegated responsibility for primary care commissioning. The study took place between May 2015 to June 2017. The strength of this study lies in the bringing together of evidence from senior policy makers as to the overall objectives for the policy with both telephone survey and case study evidence as to how it is playing out in practice. The specific research questions addressed in this report are:

What is the scope of co-commissioning activity and the process of change?
What approaches have been taken by CCGs to:
Develop governance structure to oversee primary care co-commissioning?
Commissioning and contracting?
Manage and develop the relationships between CCGs and their membership and between CCGs and external stakeholders?
Manage conflicts of interest?
What are the impacts and outcomes CCGs would expect from taking on delegated responsibility and claims of early successes?
What factors have affected CCGs’ progress and development?