Design Options for Commissioning Support Organisations

• Establish the functions that are required to support future commissioning activity, ensuring quality and financial sustainability thresholds can be maintained.

• Understand the appetite and demand from local CCGs and locality leads for functions to be delivered by a CSO. This needs to reflect the current and anticipated capability and capacity within the CCGs, the Clusters and appropriate scale of functions across a locality (e.g. pan-CCG, cluster level or pan cluster level).

• Review available models of organisational form to determine best fit to meet the needs of both the organisation and its customers.

• Test and challenge current thinking to ensure it is fit for purpose, future proofed (as much as possible in the current context) and sustainable.

• We use our experience in developing several collaborative commercial / commissioning organisations (such as CSUs, contract management and procurement hubs) to support planning and go-live of CSOs.