19.01.16
Lay members’ input essential for CCGs taking on primary care duties
Commissioners across the health service are being reminded of the essential role lay members play in governance and decision-making as part of a new guide designed to improve their relationships with CCGs and national bodies.
The guide, launched by NHS Clinical Commissioners (NHSCC), builds on advice and information collected from nearly 200 CCG lay members across 144 different commissioning groups.
It offers a range of advice and recommendations specifically intended to maximise the importance and nature of the lay member’s role in CCGs, particularly at a time when these bodies are taking on more responsibility for commissioning primary care services from general practice.
These recommendations include promoting comprehensive inductions when lay members join a CCG to ensure they are up to speed with NHS terminology, the regional and national context in which they work, and the skills they need to work well.
Regular one-to-ones and annual appraisals should be prioritised to give lay members feedback on their performance, while allowing them enough time for career development to support succession planning.
Job descriptions must also clearly specify the essential and core duties of lay members in order to help CCG leaders to manage them, while also allowing lay members to understand their functions better.
Other advice was laid out for NHS England and the Department of Health as a whole, including developing appropriate national training, resources and development packages for lay members.
Chair of the NHSCC Lay Member Network and governing body lay member at South Eastern Hampshire CCG, Susanne Hasselmann, said: “Lay members bring a wealth of experience at senior or board level and play a pivotal role in ensuring that governance is maintained and CCGs make the best possible decisions for patients.
“The lay member role has developed since CCGs were first set up, particularly as CCGs are taking on more responsibility for commissioning primary care services. As the guide makes clear, lay members bring an essential independent perspective to the CCG governing body - being separate from its day to day running gives them a unique view of the organisation and therefore a valuable perspective that will help the CCG and the services it delivers for patients and local populations.”
The report also makes clear that lay members can help mitigate conflicts of interest brought on by primary care co-commissioning, for which NHS England has already issued statutory guidance.
Pat Shirley, lay member at NHS Fareham and Gosport CCG, emphasised that all board members must be strategic thinkers, but non-executive directors can also bring a level of impartiality to the group, which executive participants cannot.
“CCG lay members are in an ideal position to offer a relevant and informed, yet outside, perspective. I am a strategist, a leader, an influencer,” Shirley said.
“I have a responsibility to support the delivery of servicer, but I have a responsibility to hold the impartial line.”
According to the organisation’s Lay Member Network, lay members have also been handed increasingly greater responsibilities relating to membership and chairing of primary care commissioning committees.
Because of that, a large amount of CCGs have appointed extra lay members or increased the responsibilities of their existing ones.