Meeting documents

The following questions had been received from Ms Ozma Hafiz:

1)    What provisions were being made for the extra strain on the NHS when children's centres (which played an important role in early detection and prevention) close?

Dr J O’Grady, Director of Public Health, responded that the Public Health (PH) nursing services commissioned from Buckinghamshire County Council (BCC) would continue to provide all the services they offered in clinics and groups at venues across the county, in a range of venues such as children’s centres, community hospitals and village and community halls.  There would be no change to any services commissioned by the NHS e.g. ante-natal services.  

2)    When was the public consultation being held on whether Bucks becomes an ACO/ICS?

Mr D Williams, Director of Strategy and Business Development, Buckinghamshire Healthcare Trust (BHT) advised that the Integrated Care System (ICS) was not a statutory organisation being developed, the statutory organisations involved were part of a partnership to improve care for residents and patients in Buckinghamshire and was therefore not subject to consultation at this stage.  Mr Williams stressed the importance of involving patients and communities in the way health and social care was provided across the county.  Through the partnership, community engagement was happening in a number of ways.  There had been a community hubs engagement process focusing on care closer to home, with events in the autumn and winter engaging with over 600 members of the community to discuss how health care could be improved in Buckinghamshire.  The ICS was also developing a stakeholder reference group which involved members of the community and voluntary groups to help steer the ICS in the right way.

3)    Bed closures in Bucks were contributing to national patients being affected with operations delayed at NSIC.  We had less beds in Bucks compared to this time last year. Operations at Oxford had again been cancelled this week (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-43470237) Would the committee agree that it was time to reopen beds at Marlow, Thame and Wycombe Hospital and restore services to meet population needs?

This question would be responded to by BHT. 

The following question had been received from Mr Bill Russell:

As I understand it the purpose of the change to an ICS was to improve the health and wellbeing of the residents of Buckinghamshire. The performance of the ICS would be based, in part, on patient outcomes.  The tax payers need to see evidence that the new system was achieving these objectives.  

To know that the new system was better than the old system we need to be able to compare outcomes from before the change to outcomes after the change. For that we need data on the current outcomes and the level of health & wellbeing of the population (from the old system) so we can use them as a baseline to see the improvements in a few years’ time.

Can the Health & Wellbeing Board ensure that this outcomes data is published & publicised?

Dr Sam Williamson, Acting Consultant, Public Health reported that as part of the ICS, one of the three priority areas identified in the first year was Population Health Management (PHM). One of the core work streams of PHM was to develop an outcomes framework. This work had already started, including engagement with the public through a number of workshops. Patient outcomes would feature prominently within the outcomes framework and the leads were working closely with NHS England to produce this piece of work. Public Health and Health and Social Care Commissioners already used routine data sets and data on the local population to have an understanding of local health and care needs; going forward these would be used to provide the baseline for future improvements. NHS England was supporting the ICS sites in developing the dashboard indicators and PH had been liaising with other sites to gain an understanding of the process.

A written response would be provided to all the questions following the meeting.