This report offers practical learning and evidence on what and how to commission differently for the People Powered Health approach to healthcare.

Key findings

• Put long-term outcomes for people, not short-term outcomes for institutions, at the centre of decision-making - a refocusing on who (rather than what) commissioning is for.
• Ensure the commissioning process reflects the lived experience of users, through processes of co-design, community research and pathway mapping.
• Re-frame the role of commissioner as one of leadership of genuine partnerships and collaboratives - working in partnership with those from every part of health and social care, including patients, practitioners and providers.
• Move away from commissioning as procurement of existing services to commissioning as market-making, with a focus on commissioning different types of services, supporting alliances of providers, embracing provision from outside the mainstream and building up existing provider capacity.
• Conventional approaches to achieving efficiencies through better procurement will not be sufficient to meet the needs, obstacles and opportunities that face the NHS over the next decade.

The challenges facing the NHS require radical new models and these models need to be created through an active and engaged commissioning process.

At the heart of a People Powered Health approach is a focus on people, not institutions - a belief in the power of people and communities working together to produce better outcomes, in terms of both people's health and value for money for the taxpayer.

Commissioners have the potential to play an increasingly critical role in this. They need to take bold, brave and radical steps towards not just the commissioning of new kinds of services but entirely new models of commissioning that adopt methods that reflect the lived experience of users; re-frame the commissioner as the leader of partnerships and collaboratives; and move away from commissioning as procurement to commissioning as market-making.

There is an emerging vision of Commissioning for the People Powered Health approach that could transform health care.

Authors

Paul Corrigan, Georgina Craig and Martha Hampson with Peter Baeck and Katharine Langford. Series Editor: Julie Temperley