THE STRUCTURE of the NHS will change dramatically from Monday when GPs will be handed the responsibility of planning and buying health services.

The latest shake up in the NHS, which will see GPs lead Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), was announced in 2010 soon after the coalition Government came into power.

The aim was to reduce the number of managers and administrators in NHS organisations and use the expertise of front line clinicians in shaping health services.

At a meeting at the Great Western Hospital tomorrow, Chief Executive of the Trust, Nerissa Vaughan will outline the changes.

She said: “The sheer number of new organisations with new roles and responsibilities means there is still a high degree of uncertainty as new people take up position and new powers are exercised, so this is clearly an area we need to watch closely.

“The biggest change in the NHS is the development of Clinical Commissioning Groups. The CCGs will take over the commissioning role currently performed by PCTs, and are based around local consortia of GPs. Locally our two main CCGs will be Swindon and Wiltshire. Within Wiltshire CCG, there are three localities based around the geography of the three acute trusts in the county.”

The NHS Commissioning Board will be responsible for overseeing delivery in the new NHS, as well as commissioning GP services and holding CCGs to account. They will operate through Local Area Teams. Our LAT covers Bath, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Swindon and will operate out of Gloucester.

Local Involvement Networks (LINks) will be abolished and replaced with Local HealthWatch organisations, which are being described as the ‘new consumer champion for health and adult social care’.

Health and Wellbeing Boards have been established to integrate approaches to health care in local authority areas, combining representatives of NHS bodies and other local service providers.

Wiltshire GP supremo Dr Steve Rowlands believes GPs are best placed to decide how to spend the NHS budget.

For Dr Rowlands, a senior partner GP at the Bradford Road Surgery in Trowbridge and the chairman of Wiltshire CCG, this is the sixth NHS reorganisation in his 26 years as a GP. Dr Rowlands, who has also been medical director at NHS Wiltshire for the past two years, said the CCG will not be a recycled Primary Care Trust.

“I think the difference is the CCG will be clinically led from the bottom up,” he said. “As GPs we have 40 to 50 consultations a day with the public, and we listen to what they are saying and we want to improve the lot of the public. By putting GPs together we can come up with a plan.”

Following the Francis report into the Mid Staffordshire Hospitals inquiry which called for greater transparency in the NHS, Dr Rowlands said the CCG is open.

He said: “I’m really passionate about having the right culture in the organisation where a cleaner, for example, can say to me ‘I think you are wrong’.

“We have got very passionate GPs who want to make the NHS better. We are really lucky in Wiltshire; we have got strong local clinical practice and a group of directors who are second to none.”