The South Reading NHS CCG Board met in public on Wednesday 18th September at the Museum of Rural Life on Redands Road. This is a chance to hear presentation of reports and monitoring of performance and of plans. At the end there is chance for members of the public to ask questions.
Agenda and documents (many) are found here.
It is only possible to recount certain points from a three and a half hour meeting.
Lay board member for patient and pubic engagement, Christopher Mott, spoke to his paper. Engagement in the annual QIPP projects round had started. Public and patients felt distant from the work of the federation programme boards where engagement needed to be further developed. Work was proceeding on encouraging ptactice-based groups with Healthwatch. A "plan on a page" for engagement would be developed with patient input for 2014/15.
Cathy Winfield reported that the Pioneer bid involving 4 CCGs, 3local authorities and 3 principal supplier trusts, a bid for Government (non-financial) support in integrating health and social care, had gone well with our consortium on a short list of 20 from which 10 would be chosen, We were the only shortlisted bidders in the Thames Valley region.
Elizabeth Johnston reviewed the work of the CCG and reported steady progress against targets.
Nurse Director Debbie Daly presented the Quality Scorecard for providers to date, This showed pretty clearly the pressure that RBH h ad been under in the cold spring from April to June, when incidents requiring investigation, pressure ulcers, C Diff cases and emergency admissions had been elevated. Proportion of stroke patients admitted to Stroke Unit within 4 hours was too low. Number of Caesarian sections too high, Ms Daly said that the non-elective admissions would henceforth appear in the performance report. Further, all providers would exclude "unavoidable" pressure ulcers from their figures. (These appear to be cases where the patient is uncooperative.)
Janet Meek gave the performance report. There had been missed targets in tome to treatment, the 31 day cancer pathway and time to diagnostic test at local providers - in particular ar RBH one of the areas underperforming was opthalmology where there woud be changes to the patient pathway. Non-elective (emergency) admissions from South Reading CCG area were reducing on target despite the reported overall increases in non-elective admissions to Royal Berkshire Hospital overall. This is an important target for sustainability of our health care.
Amendments to the CCG constitution were reviewed and approved, These seemed to be mostly related to name changes of various NHS bodies.
Janet Meek also spoke to a paper on the reguations governing procurement, She suggested that in future, when commissioning new services, a checklist should be completed to demonstrate compliance.
Debbie Daly then reported on the state of the risk register. Noteworthy items were the situation at a local nursing home where CQC inspection had revealed serious failings. C.Diff cases at RBH were still excessive. Further with the IT problems continuing at RBH poor data quality could conceal problems.
In discussing performance the figures for outpatient attendances were queried as being incredible - was the data at fault?
A small number of enhanced services at local practices were approved - of which the most significant covered training and preparation for anew approach to annual reviews for diabetics.