Department of Health

Website of the Department of Health

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Policy guidance and toolkits

Further policy, guidance and tools for supporting world class commissioning

New standard contracts

Monthly bulletins on the development of new standard contracts for NHS mental health, community, and ambulance services, to be introduced from April 2009.

Care and resource utilisation: ensuring appropriateness of care

These documents for commissioners using practice-based commissioning (PBC) and primary care trusts (PCTs), describe techniques to help identify areas where services can be redesigned, thereby freeing up resources to focus on clinically needy patients. Care and resource utilisation (CRU) is all about giving the patient the right treatment in the right place at the right time.

Improving outcomes in children and young people with cancer: guidance on commissioning services for young people

Letter containing the document Key messages for commissioners of cancer services for teenagers and young adults,  developed by the National Cancer Action Team (with advice and support from an expert working group) at the request of the Children and Young People Improving Outcomes Guidance (CYPIOG) Advisory Group to support the implementation of National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidance, Improving outcomes for children and young people with cancer.

Diabetes commissioning toolkit

The diabetes commissioning toolkit provides advice for all commissioners of diabetes services. It describes how to carry out a health needs assessment for a local diabetes population and provides a generic specification for diabetes care, signposting recognised quality markers and suggesting key outcomes for the service.

Commissioning and managing screening programmes in the NHS in England

This paper is intended to be used as a best practice guide. Its aim is to clarify the existing roles and responsibilities in the NHS, in order to ensure that consistent and appropriate commissioning and performance management arrangements for screening programmes are in place.

Who Pays? Establishing the responsible commissioner

This document published in September 2007, sets out a framework for establishing responsibility for commissioning an individual's care within the NHS, in particular determining who pays for a patient’s care.

Fitness for Purpose

The Fitness for Purpose programme ran from May 2006 to March 2007 and was designed to assess PCT capabilities.

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