The final wave of pathfinder groups for the East Midlands, who will take the lead on the Government’s plans for modernising the NHS, has been announced by Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley.
The last wave, which consists of two new groups of GP practices, are among the final cohort which have been announced nationally to join the list of practices who will trail blaze the NHS reforms two years ahead of the statutory timeframe. This brings the total to 25 groups of GP practices covering the whole of the East Midlands’ population.
The groups of practices that are known as pathfinders, will take on commissioning responsibilities as part of the Government’s plans set out in the NHS White Paper Liberating the NHS: Equity and Excellence. The groups of GPs will work together to manage their local budgets and commission services for patients directly with other NHS colleagues and local authorities.
These pathfinder groups will test the new commissioning arrangements to ensure they are working well before arrangements that are more formal come into place. By being in charge of the decisions that affect their patients, the selected pathfinders represent GPs who have demonstrated readiness to start taking on commissioning responsibilities, and start putting in place health services that achieve better health outcomes for their patients.
The additional two GP pathfinders that have been announced are based in Derbyshire and Lincolnshire and already provide healthcare to over 130,000 people in these areas. This increases the amount of the East Midlands population covered by pathfinder arrangements to well in excess of 4 million.
Moira Dumma and Dr Paul Zollinger-Read, Directors ofCommissioning Development at NHS Midlands and East, commented:
“It is excellent news that the final two East Midlands consortia have joined the pathfinder programme, making 25 in total and covering the whole of the region’s population. It is very encouraging to see an increasing number of GP practices demonstrating their readiness to start delivering the NHS modernisation agenda in preparation for taking on statutory responsibilities. It shows a significant enthusiasm to get on with designing and commissioning NHS services, to improve services, quality and outcomes for patients.”
All pathfinders and prospective pathfinders will continue to receive support from East Midlands Strategic Health Authority and Primary Care Trust clusters in developing towards authorisation and ultimately becoming statutory accountable organisations from April 2013.
GP pathfinders will also be supported by the National Clinical Commissioning Network, the National Leadership Council and national primary care bodies.
