SHAs will run regional changes to NHS

Sir David Nicholson, England's NHS chief executive, said in a letter to senior NHS staff on 10 September 2010 that SHAs will oversee the moves required to set up "the proposed new Public Health Service" in their regions, in association with councils. "Engagement with local authorities will be critically important" in setting up health and wellbeing boards and the Public Health Service, he said, adding that SHA chief executives will be in charge of "the bridging function and leadership of transition at the regional level". They will work with local health and social care organisations "to develop coherent plans... for sharing commissioning capacity and capability". The Department of Health confirmed that SHAs will be abolished in 2012, as stated in the government's white paper Equity and Excellence. In a wide-ranging letter on changes resulting from the white paper, Nicholson said that some senior Department of Health staff will take on new roles. They include Christine Connelly, director of informatics, who will lead nationally on patient empowerment and the public availability of information on quality. He also said that Mike Deegan, chief executive of Central Manchester University Hospitals foundation trust, will chair a national reference group for healthcare providers, to advise on implementation and policy issues around the white paper. On GP commissioning, the main thrust of the white paper, Nicholson said that consortia to establish this should be set up at a sensible pace. "I want to be clear that this is not a race to have the first or the most GP consortia established, or to rush through unsustainable solutions on the provider side," he wrote. "For GPs, this is not about dragooning GPs into administrative boundaries that they do not feel any allegiance with."