South Reading CCG has received winter pressures funding which can be used for GP services. It will be used to open a 7-evening a week childrens' urgent care centre at a location still to be determined over the winter months. The sum of 129,000 awarded to the South Reading NHS CCG will provide 20 20-miinute appointments between 5:30pm and 8pm every evening until April 2015. It is hoped that as well as aiding the children of South Reading this arrangement will lessen the pressure on the A&E department at the Royal Berks Hospital.

The CQC has today published risk indices for most GP practices, using readily available data to give an indicator of the priority that should be afforded to their inspection. The great majority of South Reading practices fall into the low risk category - Band 6 - along with about half the practices in England. So we can expect few early inspections by CQC at most South Reading practices. The banding is based on a scoring according to a number of criteria available from practice surveys and practice returns.

We will be meeting between 6.15pm and 7:45pm on Wednesday, 29th October 2014 in the Reading Community Learning Centre 10, Eaton Place, RG1 7LP (see Agenda for directions) . There will be an election for group officers, reports of current developments in local healthcare and a talk and discussion led by Dr Rosemary Croft on "What will Parity for Mental Healthcare Require?"

We will be meeting between 6.15pm and 7:45pm on Wednesday, 26th November 2014 in the Reading Community Learning Centre 10, Eaton Place, RG1 7LP (see Agenda for directions) . There will be an election for group officers, reports of current developments in local healthcare and a talk and discussion led by Dr Rosemary Croft on "What will Parity for Mental Healthcare Require?"

The well-respected Patients' Association is recommending that patients do not make the effort to appeal to the Health Service Ombudsman. In an alarming report , citing many shocking cases the association finds that the Ombudsman failed to establish the facts of the cases cited, didn't take the views and information provided by the complainant relatives into proper account and failed to take proper clinical and medical advice. The Patients' Association found: