Clinical commissioning policies

When NHS Cheshire and Merseyside was created in July 2022 it inherited the responsibility for planning and buying healthcare treatments from its nine predecessor clinical commissioning groups (CCGs).

These responsibilities include provision and regular review of clinical commissioning policies to ensure the treatments and procedures they cover are safe and meet the latest medical evidence, research and guidance.

Clinical commissioning policies cover some specific treatments and procedures, which often only benefit certain groups of patients in some particular medical circumstances. The policies set out when and often where these treatments and procedures should be used and which patients would benefit medically from them.   

Previously CCG areas made local decisions around their clinical commissioning policies, which has resulted in some differences across Cheshire and Merseyside. To address these differences, we have been reviewing these policies to look at how they can be made the same for all former CCG areas, now known as ‘places’ (Cheshire East, Cheshire West, Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St. Helens, Warrington and Wirral).

The review is happening in stages and aims to ‘harmonise’ these separate policies for each of the treatments they cover into single, up to date Cheshire and Merseyside versions.

Many policies have been harmonised already. The review found some of these to be the same across CCG areas, already up to date with latest evidence, or didn’t mean a change in the way patients currently experience the treatments covered by these policies.

Some of the clinical policies vary from area to area and harmonising them is requiring more time to complete and more detailed consideration. This includes looking at the level of public involvement needed for each policy including both how we share information and invite feedback where it is required.

Where policies are yet to be harmonised, patients continue to be treated under the existing policy of the CCG that covered the area they live in and you can find these at the bottom of this webpage.

We will keep this webpage updated as the review progresses.

To view all the policies that have been harmonised so far, select a category from the list below.

To view the treatment policies that have not yet been harmonised, click on an area of the map below to see the full details.