Introduction
The Department of Health (the Department) is ultimately responsible for securing value for money for spending on all health services. NHS England has responsibility for arranging the provision of health services in England and for commissioning their provision. This includes primary care support services, for example, updating patient registration lists, processing contractual payments to GPs and redirecting correspondence. Until April 2016, NHS England contracted NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS), a private company part owned by the Department, to make sure that misdirected clinical correspondence was sent on to the correct GP in the East Midlands, South West and North East London. In March 2016, NHS SBS informed NHS England and the Department that it had found a backlog of correspondence which had not been redirected, some of which dated back several years. A total of 709,000 items of correspondence were eventually found to have been mishandled. NHS SBS missed many opportunities over at least five years to identify and rectify the problem.
27 November 2017