National Health Service (NHS) insider perspectives on healthcare legislation and policy: Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) in England

The aim of this research is to explore perceptions of National Health Service (NHS) insiders (clinicians and managers) on healthcare legislation and policy, namely Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) commissioning in England in 2012-2014. The method used are twenty-one semi-structured interviews. Three general insights on legislation and policy are derived from the interview data: 1) Healthcare legislation should be very carefully crafted since it is harder to undo healthcare legislation compared to just healthcare policy, 2) Simplicity, rather than complexity, in healthcare legislation/policy design seems to create better receptivity by organisations. In addition, CCG commissioning loses its strategic scope by overdoing the localism agenda and fragmentation, and 3) The partnership between clinicians and managers is a sensible idea that should be fostered in the future.