PCT — professional executive committee

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The role of the professional executive committee

Because the professional executive committee (PEC) has a professional majority, many traditional GP customers will be involved, albeit in a different role. The PEC chair is usually a GP but when involved in PCT business, s/he may also be regarded as an NHS influencer customer. Your local medical representatives should be able to provide you with vital information and intelligence on PEC GP members. You will of course also want to share your intelligence on them with your local GP representative teams.

NHS influencers should be aware that there are ongoing tensions concerning the role of the PEC within the PCT. The NHS Alliance, one of the groups representing PCTs, has commented that PEC chairs are not yet fully plugged into mainstream communications with the Department of Health. Since April 2002 the PEC has included representatives from other healthcare professional groups, such as optometry.

PCT — GPs' involvement

Engaging GPs in the new NHS

There continues to be some anxiety that GPs are not sufficiently being engaged with local NHS reforms and have become reluctant to play an active role in their local PCTs. Shifting the balance of power discussed transferring ‘power’ to the frontline of the NHS, but many doctors say it does not feel as if that is happening on the ground. The NHS Alliance, in its report Engaging GPs in the new NHS and commissioned by NatPaCT, recommended radical solutions. Currently, there is a drift away from the ‘three-at-the-top’ model of partnership and instead it is too often assumed that power lies entirely with the chief executive and chair — this must be reversed, says the Alliance. The report recommended that PCT professional executive committee chairs should be re-named chief clinical officers. NHS Alliance chairman Dr Michael Dixon said:

‘We must bring back the enthusiasm and passion GPs once held as commissioners, fundholders, locality commissioning pilots and PCGs. We must empower the GP leaders within our PCTs, who currently feel that they are sidelined or neutralised. We must ensure that the frontline feels ownership of the aims and objectives of the PCT. For clinicians the PCT must become my PCT not their PCT.’

The arrival of practice-led commissioning has been warmly welcomed by the NHS Alliance for this very reason.

Another report by the NHS Alliance and the national clinical governance support team has provided an examination of how the unique structure of PCTs is operating in practice. The report considers what needs to be done to maintain and nurture the critical three-way partnership between the board, the executive management and the PEC. Making a difference — engaging clinicians with PCTs says that the PEC is at the centre of the shift in the balance of power towards professionals and the public.

NHS Alliance chairman Dr Michael Dixon said: 'The three at the centre leadership structure is absolutely fundamental to creating a modern, patient-centred, quality health service. But much of the NHS is wedded to a binary system — chair and chief executive, lay board and management'.