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Integrated Care Systems legal structure proposals consultation

A new NHS England report seeking views on proposals to create a new legal structure for ICS was published recently, setting out plans to place ICS on a statutory footing and advance the longstanding aim of integrating health and care.

Londonwide LMCs has submitted this response to the consultation which we hope will help inform any comments you, your practice, your LMC, your PCN or your Federation want to submit. If you share some of the views expressed in our response it would add weight to have them reiterated in your own response.

The report and consultation form do not mention LMCs and GPs are only mentioned three times. There is also a lack of clarity about the mechanism and responsibility for primary care voice and concerns to be considered.

The closing date for comments to the consultation is Friday 8 January.

For ease, the questions posed (apart from name, organisation, etc) are:

4. Do you agree that giving ICSs a statutory footing from 2022, alongside other legislative proposals, provides the right foundation for the NHS over the next decade?
5. Do you agree that option 2 offers a model that provides greater incentive for collaboration alongside clarity of accountability across systems, to Parliament and most importantly, to patients?
6. Do you agree that, other than mandatory participation of NHS bodies and Local Authorities, membership should be sufficiently permissive to allow systems to shape their own governance arrangements to best suit their populations needs?
7. Do you agree, subject to appropriate safeguards and where appropriate, that services currently commissioned by NHSE should be either transferred or delegated to ICS bodies?

Last updated : 05 Jan 2021

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