They were managed by the Birmingham and The Black Country Strategic Health Authority (apart from Coventry, which was under West Midlands South).
[3] Andy Williams, the Accountable Officer of Sandwell West Birmingham CCG, was appointed the leader of the Black Country STP, and Andy Hardy, the Chief Executive of University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust the leader of the Coventry and Warwickshire STP.
[4] The plans for Birmingham and Solihull involved the development of four or five urgent care centres/integrated service hubs and moving GPs into A&E units.
[10] The Care Quality Commission after a review in January 2018 found that there was no "single, coherent strategy for Birmingham which could be clearly articulated by middle management and frontline staff" and that the "governance arrangements had an organisational rather than system focus.
[12] In 2015, the medical journal, Pulse reported that doctors in some English areas, notably South Birmingham are paid to limit hospital referrals.
The scheme is controversial and some members of the British Medical Association fear it could affect patient care adversely.
It was established from a consortium of four NHS trusts and 38 local GP practices to manage a single, whole population budget for about 300,000 people.
Merger of their pathology services at a hub in Wolverhampton was planned by June 2019, with expectations of £5 million a year savings.
An independent impact assessment recommended delayed implementation and “bridging funding” of at least £1.5m to enable the safe transition of some adult services.
[25] The joint commissioning board for the three Birmingham and Solihull clinical commissioning groups agreed in June 2017 to spend an additional £8.1 million over two years to ease pressure on adult mental health beds after an independent report produced by Mental Health Strategies had "unearthed unsafe clinical practice due to a shortfall in bedded capacity".
[27] In 2018 it was reported that all eight coroners in Birmingham had begun to see a theme across mental health deaths – a lack of finances and resources.
[28] In the year from June 2018 there were 12 deaths of patients under the care of the crisis home treatment services of Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust.
Clinicians had concerns about inadequate staffing levels, long waiting lists, and a lack of inpatient bed capacity.
In 2016, Stephen Dorrell was appointed to chair an independent board to advise and oversee the partnership between health and social services in the Birmingham and Solihull Sustainability and transformation plan as it developed over the following five years.