The Institute of Commissioning Professionals is to become a division of the Institute of Healthcare Management as part of a renewed effort to drive up commissioning standards in the wake of the Winterbourne View care home scandal.

Four years after it launched as a standalone body to help public sector procurement people share best practice and improve their relationships with service providers, the ICP has decided that in light of the new challenges arising from the latest NHS reforms, patient safety can best be served if its members are part of a bigger network.

The ICP’s founder and director Doug Forbes explained: “In light of the new healthcare reforms and the formation of clinical commissioning groups, we realised we need to be part of the health and social care mainstream in order to help improve commissioning standards.”

The recent Winterbourne View (pictured) abuse scandal was another trigger for the ICP’s strategic review. Forbes said he agreed with care services minister Paul Burstow’s analysis that the incidents of abuse at the care home were as much a failure of commissioning as regulation.

“The members of the combined organisation are committed to driving up standards and minimising the chances of this and other incidents happening again,” he said.

The ICP has also been losing members as a result of what Forbes called “the genocide amongst PCTs”, which has seen 40 per cent of healthcare commissioners nationwide lose their jobs as a result of the government’s spending cuts.

Remaining members of the ICP, which comprise professionals from across the NHS, social care and the voluntary sector, voted unanimously in favour of the merger. Forbes will take up the post as unpaid chair of the new commissioning division and return to running his consultancy from whence he launched the ICP.

Potential conflict of interest

Forbes admitted that some members had raised concerns that there could be a conflict of interest between the IHM’s membership, who comprise healthcare practitioners, and the ICP’s membership, which comprise commissioners.

But he said that all parties needed to develop a spirit of partnership and co-operation in order to drive up standards for patient safety and that this should override any conflict of interest.

The IHM is now planning a series of events to reinforce the link between the IHM and the new division.