News / HFMA 2014: Wilson outlines plans for additional funds

In his speech to the HFMA conference, Mr Wilson said £1.5bn would go to frontline commissioning – both to clinical commissioning groups and NHS England direct commissioning. Some £200m would be used for transformation and initially this would be used to support
challenged communities. A further £250m would be spent on out-of-hospital care, while the remaining £30m would go to mental health.

He said the 2013/14 financial year had been a joint success with the introduction of the new commissioning architecture and financial systems. But six months into the new year, commissioners were struggling to deliver the planned aggregate surplus. Current mitigations could see a £122m year-end overspend on plan (0.1% of turnover), with significant pressures in specialised commissioning and a number of clinical commissioning groups.

A similar number of CCGs forecast a year-end deficit in 2014/15 (18) as in 2013/14 (19).

He continued: ‘The remaining CCGs are in surplus, though 34 have a surplus of less than 1%, which is less than required in the planning guidance. Of the 18 that are in deficit, 17 are below their target allocation, some significantly below.’

He added that NHS England had pledged at a Public Accounts Committee hearing in November that CCGs significantly below target would be brought within the 5% range in the next two years.

Planning guidance for 2015/16 would include details of allocations for next year and would be published by 23 December at the latest. It was unlikely there would be any surprises in the guidance as most of the operational levers were contained in the tariff publication.

‘Details of the allocations will be in there – how we address under target CCGs and how the £200m transformation money in 2015/16 is used to support challenged communities.

‘We know there is a challenge in operational performance around referral to treatment – that won’t go away. Resilience money in the system this year will not be there next year,’ he said,

Other areas of focus in the guidance would include the better care fund and the co-commissioning of primary and specialist care. Commissioners would see another round of reductions in running costs – 12.5% in real terms, 10% cash.

‘We need to seize the day in driving the transformation in the ‘Five-year forward view,’ he added.