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National Commissioning Board

Answer

Subject to the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill and related secondary legislation, the NHS Commissioning Board will assume responsibility for: Patient safety functions currently carried out by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA); a departmental arm's-length body; leading quality improvement functions currently undertaken by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement (NHS III); also a departmental arm's-length body; a function to providing advice and guidance on information governance currently with the National Information Governance Board for Health and Social Care (NIGB); a departmental advisory non-departmental public body; and commissioning primary care services, including general practitioner services, dental services, general ophthalmic services and pharmaceutical services. With regard to these functions: in 2010-11, the cost of the NPSA patient safety division was £8,166,000; the NHSIII's annual accounts for 2010-11 showed total programme costs were £70,015,000, with a net operating cost of £60,239,000; work to assess the resources that the NHS Commissioning Board would require to perform the information governance function is still ongoing. Therefore, it is not possible to give a specific figure for this function; and in 2011-12 the cost to primary care trusts to purchase primary health care services was over £21.3 billion from the department's annual report and accounts: www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/documents/digitalasset/dh_130154.pdf.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

13083; 732 c161-2WA

Session

2010-12

Subjects

Costs Functions NHS Commissioning Board

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk