Mental health hospitals prepare for new commissioning territory

The NHS reforms implemented on 1 April mark a major move towards centralisation of procurement of secure and other specialised mental health hospital services in England, which is now one of the tasks of the new NHS Commissioning Board under what promises to be a highly centralised commissioning regime. Under the reforms, the new centrally-based NHS Commissioning Board takes over all secure commissioning: a task formerly undertaken on a regional basis. The Board will also hold commissioning responsibility for an expanded range of so-called prescribed services many of which had been (up until last month) commissioned on a local basis via the now defunct Primary Care Trusts (PCTs). Services which will now be commissioned on this central basis will include: adult eating disorders; mental health for deaf adults; gender identity disorders; severe obsessive compulsive disorders; severe personality disorders; neuropsychiatry services; and tier 4 child and adolescent mental health services. The move will have the effect of significantly narrowing the range of mental health services which will be left to the newly emergent Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), which have replaced PCTs.

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