Specialised services commissioning: area A internal medicine

Overview

As Chair of the Internal Medicine Programme of Care (PoC) I have had the privilege of working with a number of extremely able and experienced colleagues from a wide range of disciplines and feeding their views into the Specialised Commissioning Clinical Assurance Group (CRG).

As with the other PoCs, some of the CRGs represent disciplines that are well established within existing specialised commissioning frameworks, while others - such as my HepatoPancreaticoBiliary(HPB) CRG - have come new to this process or fall across several CRGs. I have been extremely impressed by colleagues’ readiness to freely collaborate in the development of service specifications (with absolutely no evidence of protective turf wars) in order to make sure that the advice to the NHS Commissioning Board (NHS CB) is consistent and workable.

I totally concur with my co-PoC Chairs, that this has been an extremely constructive and productive process. We have developed a comprehensive national set of service specifications, which when enacted should lead to uniform high levels of care across England in the delivery of specialised services under the NHS CB.

Professor Graeme Poston

Chair, NHS Specialised Commissioning Internal Medicine Clinical Reference Groups

Why your views matter

A range of service specifications and clinical policies for specialised services commissioning have been developed by Clinical Reference Groups (CRGs).

There has already been extensive engagement on these new national specifications and policies, as they have been developed with the support and input of lead clinicians and patient and public representatives. This approach has helped ensure that the views of key stakeholders have informed and influenced the policies and specifications.

We now want to test them further with more stakeholders to ensure all needs and considerations have been taken into account.

What happens next

This consultation is now closed.

Thank you for your feedback. The NHS CB is working through your comments and will publish a full response on this website in spring 2013.

Please note that the consultation on the specialised service specifications and policy published on 11 January will continue to be open until 22 February 2013 and can be accessed here.