Herts Valleys Clinical Commissioning Group, the NHS organisation which plans and pays for health services for patients across west Hertfordshire has seen a rise in its national standings, having being rated ‘good’ by NHS England.

NHS England, which has just published the results its 2017/18 annual assessment for CCGs nationally, congratulated Herts Valleys CCG on its continued progress over the last year, particularly on financial delivery. Financial performance is now regarded as ‘solid’ after the CCG met its statutory financial duties in 2017/18 and planning requirements for 2018/19.

The rating of ‘good’ marks a significant step forward from the CCG’s previous two years’ rating of ‘requires improvement’.

NHS England also praised the CCG for excellent stakeholder feedback, saying that this demonstrates strong engagement and partnership working which has led to the CCG being nominated for a best practice case study nationally.

The CCG is also congratulated on delivering the national 62 day targets for cancer treatment and an improvement in now meeting the national dementia target.

CCG Chief Executive, Kathryn Magson says: “This is an excellent result overall that shows great progress and is a huge testament to the hard work and commitment by our GP membership, clinicians and the wider CCG staff during 2017/18. It’s a great platform on which to build as we address challenges that remain around urgent and emergency care.

“Our work to enhance community services to avoid the need for people needing hospital treatment and also to support hospital discharges is critical to sustainable improvement. Delivery of these new community-based services remains a key area of focus for the CCG and we are already underway with this work having launched some new services and being in the process of redesigning and recommissioning others.

 “At the same time we will retain our relentless approach in working with GPs and other providers to make sure that we deliver quality care for our patients, including reducing waiting times for treatments, whilst continuing to balance the books.”

CCG Chair, Nicolas Small says: “This is an extremely positive report for the CCG. We have worked hard over the past year to strengthen the organisation and the acknowledgement that we have a firm grasp of quality, performance and finance – all underpinned by clear governance arrangements - is very welcome.

“As well as making sure we continue with our own organisational delivery, we’ll also be focusing more in the coming year on working with other organisations across the Hertfordshire and West Essex STP so that we deliver as a wider health and social care system – building on the strong engagement and partnership working that is in place. Given the increasing number of frail patients and people with complex care needs we all need to work more collaboratively to help people live long, healthy lives and to make sure that services continue to be sustainable.

“Having just celebrated the NHS’s 70th anniversary it’s a fitting time to thank our staff, clinicians, partners and volunteers who are working so tirelessly, often under huge pressure, to deliver for patients and also to continue to shape future services.”