Measuring the impact of health scrutiny

A team of renowned health and local government experts has been evaluating the impact of health scrutiny in England between 2004 and 2007.

The team, coordinated by the University of Manchester, includes input from The Manchester Centre for Healthcare Management (MCHM), The Institute for Political and Economic Governance (IPEG) and The National Primary Care Research and Development Centre (NPCRDC).

Health scrutiny has predominantly developed a 'collaborative' style, bringing people together around cross-cutting health and well-being issues and promoting shared responsibility for tackling inequalities. OSCs have also recognised the contribution local authorities can make to improve health and encourage the corporate activity of local councils to 'place shape'. By and large, OSCs are avoiding the adverse effects of party politics and are not demonstrating what might be described as 'knee jerk' opposition to change in the NHS. Most of the cases examined during the research displayed a strong mix of 'collaboration' and 'corporate support'. 'Campaigning' and 'challenge' have been identified to a lesser extent. The research report recognises that these forms of democratic accountability often overlap and that OSCs can display them to various degrees throughout particular scrutiny reviews or across their work programmes generally. Separating them out as distinct elements is difficult since no one form of accountability is more important than the others. OSCs need to decide which combination is right for the issues under consideration.

 Process, progress and making it work - health scrutiny in England (executive summary)

 Scrutinising for health (executive summary)

back to top