Integrated care board support

Strategic commissioning

As ICBs become strategic commissioners they, with their providers, need to build skills in:

• Leadership for system collaboration
• Ensuring outcomes and value
• Working together for neighbourhood success
• Population health for change
• Communication to deliver effective change

Change needs to be co-developed with local populations to ensure care is close to home, where appropriate, for those who need it the most. Health and wellbeing should be promoted and relationships with local communities developed to build on their strengths and increase their resilience.

Our support programme, will help providers and commissioners to deliver joined up care for local populations. The programme will run throughout 2026, starting in January. More information can be found on our events page.

Understanding commissioning for outcomes

As the NHS implements its 10 Year Health Plan, a fundamental transformation is underway in how care is commissioned and delivered. Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) are evolving into strategic commissioners, with a renewed focus on population health, prevention, and value-based outcomes. To realise this vision of strategic commissioning, commissioners, providers and others will need to understand the vision and how they can navigate this change. Commissioners will need to make the strategic shift to outcomes-based commissioning and contracting, embed value-based healthcare principles and work collaboratively with providers to deliver strategic commissioning.

Understanding population health management

Do you want to understand more about population health management? We could help you to identify segments/ cohorts of your population that have poor outcomes and are the highest users of services and where earlier or different interventions may help reduce the demand on your clinicians and improve patient outcomes. This will also be necessary as you seek to target your scarce neighbourhood team resources. Let us help you to understand how you can improve patient outcomes, population health, manage the demand for services and importantly improve satisfaction and even bring joy back to work for clinicians. PCC can work with primary care networks, neighbourhood teams, integrated care boards and practices through bespoke workshops or hands on support, contact enquiries@pcc-cic.org.uk.

Understanding primary care

Understanding primary care contracts is crucial to securing robust primary care services at the heart of neighbourhood working. PCC has supported numerous ICBs to understand their responsibilities relating to primary care contractors and the detail of the contracts that are in place.

Executive management teams need to have a fundamental understanding of legislation in relation to all the primary care services in order that they can undertake their duties. This includes:

• ICB powers/responsibilities
• Decision making processes
• Implications of decisions made
• Contractual compliance mechanisms

Training for boards and senior managers will provide confidence to address issues and support their commissioning team with decisions. Having this high level knowledge will ensure that decisions and actions are in line with the legislative and contractual framework and will reduce the risk of a successful challenge. Contact enquiries@pcc-cic.org.uk to book a session for your ICB.

The primary care commissioning team need an in depth knowledge of primary care services contracting and commissioning, which includes:

• Understanding the legislative and contractual frameworks
• Procurement/market entry
• Contract and performance management
• Decision-making
• Finance.

You can purchase our support through an annual contract or on a pay as you go basis.

Resources

The Strategic Commissioning Framework
The framework released in November 2025 provides the information that ICBs require to successfully implement the vision of strategic commissioning. The framework includes the context of strategic commissioning, what the enablers are, whilst looking at the opportunities available at different scales of commissioning.

The Model ICB
The Model ICB document was developed by a group of integrated care board (ICB) leaders from across the country. Going forward ICB core functions will be understanding the local context, developing long term population health strategy, delivering the strategy through payer functions and resource allocation, evaluating impact. PCC has developed a summary with a focus on primary care and neighbourhood implications.

Strategic commissioning of primary care – embedding value
As integrated care boards (ICBs) become strategic commissioners they need to actively manage and embed value in all commissioning activity including primary care, which is constituted of medical, dental, eye care and community pharmacy services. This briefing outlines some of the first steps ICBs need to consider.

Why command-and-control doesn’t work in complex healthcare systems
A shift towards outcomes will be at the heart of successful strategic commissioning. This article considers how clear objectives help different parts of a system understand how their work connects to a larger mission. This is at the heart of implementing the 10 Year Health Plan where collaboration is key, and outcomes will depend on multiple teams or organisations working together. For success a shared purpose, visible logic, clearer information flows and a system that can learn faster than the problems it is trying to solve will be essential.