Luciana Berger – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-12-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, when he plans to publish details of his proposal to introduce Ofsted-style ratings for clinical commissioning groups’ mental health services.

Alistair Burt

My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State has announced that the new Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) assessment framework being developed by NHS England will contain six key clinical areas, including mental health. The framework will be published in March 2016 and will be operational from 1 April 2016.

An annual assessment of these clinical areas will be moderated by independent panels of experts. Paul Farmer, Chief Executive of MIND, has been appointed panel chair for mental health.

A first simple assessment of all CCGs in these six areas will be published in June 2016. The formal annual summative assessment of all CCGs for 2016/17 will happen at the end of that financial year and be published in summer 2017. The annual assessment will be based on a four point scale of outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate.