GP commissioners are being ´set up to fail´ in their task of commissioning £60 billion worth of NHS care because they have no training or infrastructure to fall back on, experts have warned.

Clinical commissioning groups will have to manage on management allowances of far less than the nominal £25 per head per year and could struggle to afford the cost of large-scale procurements, it has has been warned.

Leading GPs have responded to a surprise £100m winter cash injection for CCGs by saying the funding could have been better used if included in budgets at the start of the year.

Frustration over lack of choice and clarity over commissioning support is growing. Alisdair Stirling and Emma Wilkinson look at the issues.

Practical Commissioning editor Sue McNulty gives an overview on how implementation of the bill is shaping up on the ground

Recommendations from the Mid Staffs public inquiry will be published later this year, but the counsel’s summing up last month already provides fundamental lessons for CCGs

Sheffield CCG has just been handed a £720m budget. Dr Tim Moorhead describes what it feels like to hold the purse strings

Rebecca Norris gets top tips from GPs and other experts to assist CCGs as they move further into their role as overseers of the level of quality being provided in hospitals

It’s been a hairy couple of months for our diarist as tensions mount between the CCG and hospital consultants. But he’s hanging in there...

A medical school reunion makes our diarist ponder how his ‘NHS story’ will conclude.

Leading commissioners sat down last week to discuss whether CCGs are being given the powers and independence they need to make a success of the NHS reforms. Here are the highlights from a lively debate

The latest NHS Outcomes Framework, published last month, contains a new indicator concerning young people's experience of care. If your team commissions hospital services for children and...

Recently, I attended a seminar organized by Saga about funding the care of the elderly. It was led by Andrew Dilnot, whose recent report on the subject ‘Fairer Care Funding' published...

If I am your local district general hospital what possible incentive is there for me to manage patients as cost effectively as possible with as few interventions, investigations and...

Nuffield Trust head of policy Dr Judith Smith discusses how commissioners can involve acute providers at the strategic level to improve care for patients

This month we look at how clinical commissioners can reassure themselves about the quality of care their local hospital provides. Practical Commissioning editor Sue McNulty looks at the new role for GPs asquality overseers

Dr Jonathan Shapiro on the whats, whys and hows of increasing capacity.