Radiotherapy
(asked on 7th September 2023) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he plans to create the nine statutory joint committees on radiotherapy; and what the process will be for creating those committees.
NHS England published a roadmap in May 2022 setting the direction of travel for greater integration of specialised services with integrated care board (ICB) commissioned services, in order to better join up patient pathways. A copy of the roadmap is available at the following link:
An analysis of the entire specialised services portfolio was undertaken to determine which services are both suitable and ready for greater ICB leadership. Following an assessment of ICB system readiness at the end of 2022, which was signed off by the NHS England Board in February 2023, nine statutory joint committees between NHS England and multi-ICB collaborations were established on 1 April 2023 taking on joint responsibility for commissioning decisions on 59 specialised services. A list of these services (which includes radiotherapy services) is available at the following link:
To ensure appropriate oversight and assurance of specialised services under the nine statutory joint committees in 2023/24, NHS England produced guidance for its regional teams and integrated care boards which was released in February 2023. The guidance sets out four key areas that NHS England's regional specialised commissioning teams, working with and through the joint committees, should be regularly overseeing and monitoring in relation to their specialised provision (including providers of radiotherapy services). These four areas are: timeliness of provision; quality of provision; use of resources/value for money; and equity and health inequalities.