News / New STP assessment sets baseline to measure partnerships’ development

Each of the 44 STPs were categorised in four overall ratings – outstanding, advanced, making progress or needs most improvement. The ratings are based on performance against nine categories, including finance, demand management, leadership, emergency care and elective care. 

While five STPs were rated outstanding, 18 were assessed as advanced, 16 making progress and five needing most improvement.

The finance rating is calculated as the overall financial surplus or deficit expressed as a percentage of the aggregate control total – the combined 2016/17 surplus or deficit of all the trusts and clinical commissioning groups in the area divided by the total resource available (financial control total). 

Unsurprisingly, given the financial difficulties in recent years, the calculation produced a positive figure in only 19 STPs. 

NHS England said the STP assessments would provide a baseline across the whole
 of each local system. It showed the scale of the challenge facing each STP. Its chair, Malcolm Grant (pictured), said the report should not be read like a report on failing schools.

‘This is not an Ofsted report. This is a way of assessing maturity at the very early stages of what is a highly complex planning process and development of partnerships,’ he told the NHS England July board meeting.

‘The object of the exercise is to respect and reflect those who are truly outstanding. [It will also] identify where we can work closely with all the other partnerships.

‘This is positive in its purpose and helps us to assess what are the next steps we need to be taking collectively to develop the STP process through to ACSs and ACOs.’

NHS England national director for operations and information Matthew Swindells added: ‘In a year’s time we will get a sense of how STPs are helping to move systems forward. It’s a good baseline and tells us something about the way systems stand at the moment.’

The national commissioning body also published its annual assessment of CCGs, which is based around 29 policy areas, such as finance, delivery and outcomes. In 2015/16, 26 CCGs were rated inadequate, but this fell to 23 in 2016/17. CCGs assessed as requiring improvement fell from 91 to 66, while the number of good CCGs increased from 82 to 99. The number of outstanding CCGs doubled – from 10 in 2015/26 to 21 in 2016/17.