Clinical leadership through commissioning: Does it work in practice?

Abstract

In tune with much international practice, the English National Health Service has been striving to transform health care provision to make it more affordable in the face of rising demand. At the heart of a set of recent radical reforms has been the launch of ‘clinical commissioning’ using the vehicle of local groups of General Practitioners (GPs). This devolves a large portion of the total healthcare budget to these groups. National government policy statements make clear that the expectation is that the groups will ‘transform’ the organisation and provision of health services. In this article, we draw upon interviews, observations and analysis of internal documents to make an assessment of the extent to which clinical leaders have seized the opportunity presented by the creation of these groups to attempt transformative service redesign.