NHS ACE Achieving Commissioning Excellence

Home

Welcome to Achieving Commissioning Excellence, a new website aiming to support the development of NHS clinically-led commissioning of healthcare services. This site is a collaboration overseen by NHS Alliance, and has been funded by Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK Limited, but all editorial content is created & maintained by NHS Alliance alone.

Our aim is to create to discuss and debate key commissioning issues. We offer interviews with industry leaders, and our interactive forum allows conversation, challenge and critique (which we hope will be robust, but are clear will be respectful).

We are also developing and updating resources which will provide theoretical background and practical help to addressing local commissioning issues.

Some define commissioning as the cumulative effect of GP referral and prescribing decisions.
Others perhaps perceive a wider picture, seeing it as more about the decisions made by the holders of public budgets whether and when to make or buy healthcare.

Another level of commissioning is understanding how to achieve successful prevention, and working with patients in community settings on the ongoing management of their long-term conditions.

We believe that clinicians, working together across sectors, must become more fully engaged and involved in resource use decisions regarding the public sector healthcare budget. Healthcare experts (such as Professor Chris Ham of the Kings Fund) have pointed out that commissioning is very difficult, and challenges healthcare systems throughout the world.

When it comes to commissioning, much learning remains to be done. Our aim is to support and inform that process.