On 13th February the Department for Health laid before Parliament new statutory regulations governing procurement and competition. They will govern procurement by Clinical Commissioning Groups like the South Reading CCG after 1st April. The regulations and the official explanatory memo are attached.This followed a consultation last year. While they give welcome rights to patients, there are areas for concern, especially in that they require "best value" although the Health and Social Care Act 2012 ruled out competition on the basis of price.
Statutory regulations are not normally debated by Parliament byt the organisation 38 degrees is petitioning for a full debate in this case
38 degrees petition
The attached response to consultation from the Patients Association raises some concerns.
The Health Service Journal commented, "Lawyers working in the NHS told HSJ the regulations could have wide-reaching implications on the mix of providers of NHS-funded services. The rules ban any restrictions on competition that are not necessary. They say contracts can only be awarded without tender for technical reasons, or reasons connected with the protection of exclusive rights or for reasons of extreme urgency.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chief negotiator of the British Medical Association's General Practitioner Committee is quoted in Pulse magazine as saying, "These regulations are placing a compulsion on CCGs to use competition by default, with exceptions to this occurring in defined instances. I think that reneges on the commitment given by Government to CCGs at the passing of the bill.
An ideological requirement for competition will be bureaucratic and will force CCGs to commission with the private sector. The last thing CCGs need is to be spending all of their time putting out every service to tender. There is a huge bureaucracy and expense involved in processing tenders.
it will affect GPs because the last thing we want is for CCGs to be incurring expense, delay of going through tendering processes, but also we dont want GPs as providers to be putting unnecessary time and expense into tendering for services either."