Practice-Based Commissioning (PBC) was a United Kingdom Department of Health initiative introduced in 2005 to improve

primary care Primary care is the day-to-day healthcare given by a health care provider. Typically this provider acts as the first contact and principal point of continuing care for patients within a healthcare system, and coordinates other specialist car ...

services by enabling healthcare professionals to decide how services are funded to meet the needs of the local population. PBC was designed to give healthcare staff, usually general medical practitioners (GPs), the resources and support to become directly involved in decisions on commissioning health services. Policymakers wanted PBC to lead to high-quality services for patients in local and convenient settings. The incentive for GP involvement was that their practices could retain a proportion of any savings they made to invest in their own practices. In this respect, it was seen as a new Labour policy successor to the early 1990s Conservative policy of GP fundholding.

Lord Warner Norman Reginald Warner, Baron Warner, (born 8 September 1940) is a British member of the House of Lords. A career civil servant from 1960, he was created a life peer in 1998. He was Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Department of Health fro ...

, former Labour Minister of State for Health, described the benefits of PBC as: "If there is an alternative that is better for the patient and better for the NHS, then practice-based commissioning provides the basis on which they can change the way that services are delivered." The government intended GP practices to be supported by the PCTs (

primary care trust Primary care trusts (PCTs) were part of the National Health Service in England from 2001 to 2013. PCTs were largely administrative bodies, responsible for commissioning primary, community and secondary health services from providers. Until 31 May ...

s) to buy in ("commission") services for their patients based on cost and quality of care. This process was expected to generate financial savings of which 7/10ths may be retained by the practice for further investment while the remainder is passed back to the PCT. Two years after the initiative was introduced, both doctors and primary care trusts were struggling to understand how to implement the scheme. By 2010, GP practices were forming coalitions known as consortia, in order to commission services at the necessary scale and efficiency. While this process was initially voluntary, eventually practices were ordered to become part of commissioning groups as part of the

Health and Social Care Act 2012 The Health and Social Care Act 2012c 7 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It provided for the most extensive reorganisation of the structure of the National Health Service in England to date.'' BMJ'', 2011; 342:d408Dr Lansley's M ...

References

External links

Department of HealthPBCNHS ConfederationCommissioning for quality – delivering national prioritiesBBC News - Q&A: The NHS shake-up
{{DEFAULTSORT:Practice-Based Commissioning Health care management Health economics National Health Service (England)