The perceived benefits of joint commissioning in health and social care often lag behind the reality, according to a new report.
The study, carried out by the University of Birmingham for the National Institute of Health Research, found that there is no evidence joint commissioning improves outcomes. It also warns that new financial pressures will make joint commissioning harder in the future.
Dr Helen Dickinson, one of the co-authors of the report, Joint Commissioning in Health and Social Care: An Exploration of Definitions, Processes, Services and Outcomes, said: ‘Our research finds no clear evidence that joint commissioning improves outcomes across the board. Even though we picked sites of ‘best practice’ for the study, most sites found it difficult to demonstrate what joint commissioning had achieved locally.’
The study calls on Government to communicate the objectives of joint commissioning more clearly to local organisations and decide what it should deliver before ‘pressurising’ local authorities and CCGs to combine budgets.
The study also found that the necessary reform involved in joint commissioning was often 'difficult, disruptive and time consuming'.
Prof Jon Glasby, another co-author of the report, said: ‘Many of the joint commissioners in this study struggled to say what makes joint commissioning distinct from other ways of working, or what it achieves in terms of outcomes.
‘Rather than seeing joint commissioning as a discrete way of organising that produces certain results, perhaps we should see it as a more general way of bringing partners together and helping to mobilise staff locally.’
