The London Clinical Senate is hosted by NHS England (London Region) but operates independently to provide independent clinical advice. It has no executive authority or legal obligations.
The Senate makes recommendations for consideration and implementation as determined by statutory organisations. Commissioners, including Clinical Commissioning Groups, Integrated Care Systems (from July 2022) and NHS England, remain accountable for the commissioning of services, and providers remain accountable for the quality of service delivery. The Clinical Senate, however, serves as an important enabler of change through the clinical leadership and engagement that it provides.
London Clinical Senate Guiding Principles
As part of the London Clinical Senate’s development in January 2014, the Senate Council and Patient & Public Voice (PPV) group identified a set of principles that provide a framework for the work of the Senate. These were updated in June 2020, as part of an ongoing refresh. Individual principles are constantly reviewed in light of key priorities and emerging best practice, for example, addressing health inequalities and environmental sustainability in healthcare.
The principles are:
- Promote population health management and integrated working across health and care, ensuring a seamless patient journey.
- Be patient-centred and co-designed-this includes patient experience, patient involvement and staff engagement and involvement in development and design of services.
- Reduce inequalities- this involves understanding and tackling inequalities in access, health outcomes and service experience, and being responsive to the diversity within London’s populations. It includes all inequalities e.g. between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not, as well inequalities that may arise from geography and deprivation.
- Demonstrate parity of esteem between mental and physical health for people of all ages.
- Support self-care and health and wellbeing where appropriate.
- Improve standards and outcomes- this includes use of evidence and research, application of national guidance, best practice and innovation.
- Ensure value- this includes issues such as affordability, cost effectiveness and efficiency, long term sustainability, implications for service users and the workforce and consideration of unintended consequences.
- Demonstrate how environmental sustainability and moves to carbon neutral are included in any plans and developments