Does commissioning require secondary care input to stand a chance, and if so how might that work?
RN: “A number of us have argued for a long time that there are far too many PCTs. They’ve been small and acted parochially to maintain local services. This worked against patient choice – a key plank in the new Government’s strategy. I hope the new commissioning arrangement will give GPs and patients a much wider range of choice.” Do clinicians in primary and secondary care trust one another’s data? RN: “I think there is a high degree of trust, both ways. There will always be some differences at the margin, but we have very effective mechanisms to iron out differences of opinion. “We welcome any challenge to our data as a means of identifying improvement. Good quality coding is especially important for UCLH as we have a higher proportion of complex, high-cost patients who need more expensive treatments. Service line reporting and patient level costing are increasingly important to us, and help to achieve greater transparency between us and commissioners.” How do you achieve a healthy c
