Black Country CCGs announce plans to merge
Health groups which help to fund hospital services across the Black Country are to merge, under new proposals.
The four Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) in the Black Country and West Birmingham – Dudley, Sandwell and West Birmingham, Walsall and Wolverhampton – will come together to form a single CCG if plans are backed.
Bosses say the merger will help deliver commitments to improve the health of people in the region and cut running costs, freeing up more cash to be spent on healthcare. CCGs pay for health services delivered in hospitals.
The CCGs have already started working together and aligning teams and committees and now share a senior leadership team, headed up by a single chief executive, Paul Maubach.
Health chiefs said teams would based in each of the Black Country boroughs to retain local contacts.
They said "after much discussion" governing bodies "have indicated a preference to merge fully because they believe that the benefits of doing so would be much greater than staying as we are today".
However, bosses said a final decision had not yet made and that were keen to hear views of GPs, partners and patients.
If the merger is backed it would come into force from next April.
Mr Maubach said: “Our governing bodies recognise the benefits of a single team and a single merged CCG to improve our ability to support the health and wellbeing of people in the Black Country and West Birmingham.
"I want to reassure you that whatever a future commissioning organisation might look like, our decision-making will continue to be clinically-led and we will remain committed to the relationships which we hold in each of the five places we serve.”
