A Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is an ORGANISATION.

Clinical Commissioning Groups will begin to be established as statutory ORGANISATIONS from April 2013.

Clinical Commissioning Groups will be groups of GP Practices that will be responsible for buying health and care services for PATIENTS, taking over the role from Primary Care Trusts. They will implement the new commissioning roles as set out in the White Paper Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS.

These groups of GP Practices, working with other healthcare professionals and in partnership with local communities and Local Authorities will commission the majority of NHS Services for PATIENTS within their local communities. They will have a duty to work with Local Authorities in relation to health and adult social care, early years services, public health etc.

The Clinical Commissioning Groups will not be responsible for commissioning dentistry, community pharmacy, and primary ophthalmic services, or directly be involved in commissioning services that GP Practices provide. They will have the flexibility to decide which commissioning activities they undertake themselves or choose to buy in commissioning support from external ORGANISATIONS.

The NHS Commissioning Board will:

• establish a system of Clinical Commissioning Groups with the power to assign GP Practices to Clinical Commissioning Groups if necessary
• allocate budgets directly to Clinical Commissioning Groups and will hold Clinical Commissioning Groups to account and in turn Clinical Commissioning Groups will hold its constituent GP Practices to account for stewardship of resources and the outcomes they achieve. 

For further information on Clinical Commissioning Groups, see the Department of Health website.

This supporting information is also known by these names:

Context	Alias
formerly	GP Commissioning Consortia, GP Consortia
shortname	CCG
plural	Clinical Commissioning Groups