Commissioning
How we plan and pay for the services you might need.
One of our main roles as a PCT is to commission - that is plan, pay for and monitor - health improvement and health care services that you might need if you live in the Wakefield district. When making decisions on what to commission, we need to make sure that we:
- match services to the healthcare needs of local people, making sure they get good quality care, in the right place and at the right time;
- get the right organisations and people to provide the services, making sure that tax payers are getting value for money and that money is being spent where it is most needed;
- are fair to the organisations providing the services and not setting them impossible goals or asking them to do something we haven't funded; and
- monitor the services to make sure that the providers are doing what we have asked them to do.
To help achieve this we have chosen to use the Institute of Public Care's Commissioning and Procurement Cycle as a framework for our activities, which you can download at the bottom of this page.
What does commissioning involve?
Commissioning healthcare involves looking at lots of different sources of information, from public health research to patient feedback. It also involves working with our partners in the public and private sectors as well as the police and other criminal justice agencies. In this way we can make sure we provide a modern healthcare service.
We have split our commissioning work into the following areas:
- Planned care such as general surgery;
- Unplanned care and long-term condition management - this covers services such as emergency ambulances and treatment of conditions such as diabetes or asthma;
- Primary care i.e. GPs, dentists, pharmacists and opticians;
- Maternity, children and young people; and
- Adults.
We will be publishing further information about how these services will be provided.
