The Reading Borough Council Health and Wellbeing Board will meet at 2pm on Friday 17th April 2015 in the Council Chamber at the Civic Centre. For agenda and papers please see the committee page on the Reading Borough Council web site.

We will be meeting between 6.15pm and 7:45pm on Wednesday, 25th March 2015 in the Reading Community Learning Centre, 94, London Street, RG1 4SJ (see Agenda for directions) . There will be a talk and discussion led by Kate Turner on the Hospital At Home programme which attempts to move more care into home and the community, as well as a consultation on this year's Beat the Streets and news and discussion about health care locally.

"The Future of Primary Care" will be the main topic of the evening when we meet between 6.15pm and 7:45pm on Wednesday, 29th April 2015 in the Reading Community Learning Centre, 94, London Street, RG1 4SJ (see Agenda for directions) . There will be a talk and discussion led by Nicola Jones, Berkshire West Federation Primary Care Transformation Manager, on the Future of Primary Care as well as discussion of local health care.

It is well known that patients are waiting longer to get a GP appointment and that without action the situation will get worse as a generation of GPs retires - two surgeries in in North and West Reading have already had to find new service providers as GPs retired and could not be replaced. Professional bodies have been looking at the role that pharmacists could play in General Practice.

The BBC has reported that the NHS in England missed the target of treating 85% of cancer patients within 2 months (62 days) for all 4 quarters of 2014. Analysis by Macmillan Cancer Support has shown that the UK is about 10 years behind leading European nations in terms of cancer five-year survival rates. A key problem is that many patients typically present llater than elsewhere.