NHS England is set to hold a series of workshops with CCGs to review how it allocates budgets to commissioning groups, it has announced.
The organisation is to implement a new method for allocating resources to the commissioning groups, which it is set to announce in December, having rejected the ‘fair shares’ allocation method for this year’s budget.
It will hold four regional workshops in Leeds, Birmingham, the Newbury area and London during September, in which CCGs will be able to give their views on how resources should be allocated.
NHS England announced: ‘As part of the review process, we will be holding four regional workshops to discuss current thinking and to hear their views about the allocations process and proposals for the future.’
In December 2012, NHS England rejected the ‘fair shares’ allocation for individual CCG funding based on disease burden and instead awarded a 2.3% uplift across the board for CCGs on their share of PCT allocations from the previous year. It said it would conduct an ‘urgent review’, which the workshops form part of.
This comes as CCGs have raised concerns about how much budget they have to spend. Pulse reported last month that CCGs face shortfalls of up to £4m after funding was needed to cover specialist commissioning at hospitals and social care.
The National Audit Office produced a report earlier in the year that found PCT data was inadequate for allocating CCG budgets.
