We have been engaging with stakeholders for the past 18 months in order to make sure our proposals are effective, workable and fair. Please feed back your views on our current consultations listed below.
From 1 April 2013, we will safeguard choice and prevent anti-competitive behaviour which is against the interests of patients. This means we will police the competition rules affecting health care services to ensure that they operate fairly in the interests of patients, and to help both providers and commissioners meet the needs of patients.
When we are doing this we will explain how any breach of these rules might affect patients adversely. We will also explain how we would expect our intervention to maintain or improve quality or innovation, or deliver better value for money.We are therefore publishing for consultation a series of documents that set out how we propose to discharge our new statutory duty. This includes draft guidance on:
Please feed back your views on these consultations by 5pm on Tuesday 25 June 2013.
Later in the spring we will publish our consultations on the guidance we intend to publish about the general approach we propose to take to using our enforcement powers under the Procurement, Patient Choice and Competition Regulations, and on guidance on how to comply with these regulations.