The Health and Care Act 2022 gives us new responsibilities to assess whether integrated care systems (ICSs) are meeting the needs of their local populations. Under the legislation the methodology we will use to carry out our assessments is subject to government approval.
Following discussions with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) we have agreed to a short delay to starting ICS assessments to allow for further refinements to our approach. We have written to ICS leaders to update them.
Completion of our ICS pilots
We have been piloting our assessment approach with Birmingham and Solihull ICS and Dorset ICS and want to thank both for agreeing to take part. Evaluation has been embedded throughout the process, and this learning will help inform our assessment approach.
We are committed to ensuring that our assessment reports are meaningful and help to drive improvement in systems. We will continue to engage with our partners and people who use health and social care services to further refine our reporting approach ahead of starting assessments.
Following government approval of our ICS methodology we will publish our pilot reports, pilot evaluation and updated guidance ahead of starting ICS assessments.
ICS fees consultation
We are grateful to everyone who responded to our consultation on our proposed approach to recovering our regulatory costs for assessing integrated care systems.
We will publish the outcome of our consultation together with our updated fees scheme once we have the required government approvals and before starting ICS assessments.
Find out more
Integrated care system assessments