This week, NHS Clinical Commissioners launched a new report showing the positive contribution that clinical commissioners are making to their local economies. With the recent Autumn Statement making it clear that neither health nor social care will receive additional funding to alleviate pressure on their increasingly overstretched services, the question of how the NHS can drive prosperity in local areas is an increasingly important one.

Shaping healthy cities and economies: The role of clinical commissioning showcases how clinical leaders in England’s core cities – the eight largest cities outside of London – are looking at how the services they commission can improve not only the health but social and economic wellbeing of their populations.

Across the core cities, clinical commissioners are working with a wide range of partners to go beyond traditional boundaries to combat health inequalities and social exclusion, increase skills and employment and to attract inward investment to help realise the potential of their local economies. This includes activities to support people with jobs, as unemployment itself is a health risk, associated with higher rates of mortality, psychological distress, and hospital admissions. 

Shaping healthy cities and economies: The role of clinical commissioning highlights programme from all the core cities, including:

• Sheffield Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is leading the work to tackle physical inactivity - which drives higher health expenditure, productivity loss, absenteeism and disability and has an overall annual cost to society of £8.2bn
• Across Manchester a CCG led programme is supporting people to address underlying issues contributing to unemployment and help people find and maintain jobs that best suit their individual needs
• Liverpool where the CCG is using its commissioning and procurement levers to support the economic, social, and environmental wellbeing of its population
• Newcastle CCG is helping to drive workforce transformation and find new ways to attract and retain new staff, particularly younger people, a key need for the local economy.
• Leeds is home to one of Europe’s largest teaching hospitals and a number of biotechnology companies, and has positioned itself as an Innovation Health Hub to accelerate innovation in public and private sector – through this Leeds CCGs are supporting plans to drive £1bn in investment and create 10,000 new jobs and training opportunities.

Chair of NHSCC’s Core Cities Network, Dr Tim Moorhead said: “This new report demonstrates the important role the health sector plays in local economies and shows how CCGs in England’s core cities are commissioning not only to improve the health but social and economic wellbeing of their populations. While there is a lot of good work already happening we are keen to do even more, and the recommendations in the report highlight how the contribution that clinical commissioning makes to local economic growth can be further increased.”

There are recommendations in the report for both national and local organisations on maximising the health sector’s role in driving economic prosperity, which include:

• Ensuring the next round of devolution plans emphasise public sector reform and explicitly consider the role the health sector makes to local economies.
• Developing suitable metrics to recognise, encourage, and measure the contribution the health sector makes to local economic growth and development.
• A more active role in their local area’s strategic economic plan being played by clinical commissioners
• That clinical leaders understand and proactively build on the full breadth of relationships underpinning local economic growth - newly elected metropolitan mayors in particular present an important opportunity to jumpstart conversations.

A copy of the report is attached here.

This document builds on some of the themes in The Future of Commissioning (published in October 2016) which sets out how clinical commissioning is evolving and looking to flex its strategic functions to further meet the needs of the local patients and populations, and the positive impact it can have on communities.