The BOB Integrated Care Board will meet in public from 10am to 1pm on Tuesday, 17th January 2023 at a venue still to be specified. The meeting can be observed online by registering in advance via the link on this page . Public questions can be submitted in advance to bobicb.enquiries@nhs.net . Click on this link to attend the meeting.

Reading again has an Urgent Care Centre, open from 8am to 8pm every day at the doctor's practice on the first floor of Broad Street Mall. The Urgent Care Centre will see people with urgent conditions. It asserts that it does not treat injuries - perhaps because it has no X-ray facilties. Anyone with and injury or a life-threatening condition should attend the Royal Berkshire Hospital's Accident and Emergency Department. The centre is commissioned to offer 100 appointments per day over an eighteen month pilot period. These appointment would be shared between people presenting themselves at the centre, and those referred by the Royal Berkshire Hospital, GPs, and parammedics . The centre is run by HCRG Group Ltd, a successor to Virgin Care and owned by Twenty20 Capital.

Reading Health and Wellbeing Board meets at 2pm on Friday 20th January 2023. You can attend the meeting online or in person. Please contact Nicky.Simpson@reading.gov.uk for remote attendance details or to submit questions. Public questions should be submitted a couple of weeks before to allow for answers to be prepared. Papers for the meeting will be available about 1 week beforehand.

The BOB integrated care system is run by its NHS Integrated Care Board but its strategy is set by a wider partnership - the BOB Integrated Care Partnership, bringing together the NHS, local authorities, voluntary and charitable organisations and others. The Integrated Care Partnership Board is now consulting on its strategic priorities for the Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West health and social care system. There will be public meetings in January 2023 (to be specified) as part of the consultation. The consultation ends on 29th January. The survey can be completed online or via a paper copy. Please click here to access the strategy document, the survey form for downloading, or the online survey.

South Reading Patient Voice will hold its first regular meeting of 2023 at 6pm on Wednesday, 8th February. This should be online via Microsoft Teams and in person in Committee Room 1 at the Civic Offices, Bridge Street, Reading RG1 2LU. We will discuss local news and patient experience and also our work plans for 2023. The meeting will be in person and online via Microsoft Teams - please click here to join the meeting via Microsoft Teams. You do not need to be using Microsoft Windows to join the meeting online. You can use any computer or phone which supports the freely available Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge or Safari browsers. Finding committee room 1
Enter via main door - go forward, then right, left past the display cases, right through the doors and the committee room is on the right opposite doors to the Council Chamber. There is car parking nearby - the nearest car park is the Oracle Holybrook car park opposite and North of the Civic Offices on Bridge Street. Some Tips on Using Microsoft Teams 
Browsers Microsoft Edge or Chrome or Apple Safari are best for using Microsoft Teams. When you click on the above link you should be shown a screen which offers you either to continue in the browser or to use the Teams app. It is fine to continue in the browser if you do not have the app and that is the easiest thing to do. After making your choice you should be shown a screen with the view from your own camera, logos of a microphone and of a film camera, and a button labelled "Join Now". There may be an invitation for you to enter your name - if so please do so. You can switch your microphone or camera on or off by using the clickable buttons to the right of the microphone and camera logos. When you are happy with the setup please click on "Join Now". You will be held in a waiting room until admitted - so it is very useful for you to have entered your name at the previous stage. Once admitted you will see some of the participants and some round logos with initials of others. The controls appear when you move your cursor to the lower part of the screen in the middle (or for some it may be the upper part - please try it out). The controls have logos for the camera and microphone and you should see a hand which allows you to "electronically raise your hand" (and then to lower it again). There is a speech bubble - click on it to show a side panel or window which contains the chat - text messages exchanged by people attending the meeting online. There is a logo of several persons - click on it to display a side panel or window showing all attendees and whether they have raised their hands. Please use the microphone logo to mute your microphone most of the time, but unmute it when you are invited to speak.

All GPs now have direct access to cancer diagnostic scans, saving an intermediate referral to a hospital consultant. NHS England says, "Under the scheme, around 67,000 people who are usually diagnosed with cancer through non-urgent testing will now be eligible for fast-tracking and have a better chance of their disease being picked up at an earlier stage."

The BOB Interated Care Board meets in public from 10am to 1pm on Wed 15th November 2022. The meeting can be live streamed by clicking here .

The BOB Integrated Care Board will meet in public at 10am on Tuesday, 17th January 2023.

South Reading Patient Voice Annual General Meeting will take place in the Main Hall at RISC - 35-39, London Street, RG1 4PS at 6pm on Wednesday, 16th November 2022. Members are asked to attend in person if possible as it is felt that a better discussion communication will result. Refreshments will be served. There is plenty of room in the Main Hall for social distancing. Constitutional amendments should be submitted by 5pm on Tuesday, 15th November so that a display can be prepared. Our constitution can be found here: click here for constitution. Please consider standinng for an office of the group - change can bring renewwal. We have prepared a questionnaire whose results could help to improve the group - please click and fill it in by Tuesday 15th November if possible.

John Burn-Murdoch, writing in the Financial Times on 4th November 2022 (behind paywall) has shown that chronic illness has increased radically since the pandemic with almost 500,000 more people in the economically active age range of 16-64 not in the work force as a result. He proposes that long waiting lists are now a significant factor keeping some of them out. Of the various conditions Mental Health problems are most likely to keep people out of the work force permanently. The number of people with unmet medical need has risen sharply. He notes, "Beginning shortly before the pandemic but then accelerating, there has been a steep climb in rates of chronic ill health among the long-term workless. Today there are half a million more working-age people in the UK with impairing health conditions than if pre-pandemic trends had continued, and 90 per cent of them are people who have not worked in several years." He concludes, "The international perspective is striking. Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing need for medical examination or treatment and been unable to get access, with almost half of these cases due to the length of waiting lists, according to data from YouGov and Eurostat. This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average. With a lengthy recession looming and spending cuts on the agenda, the future for Britains peripheral class looks bleak, but bringing them back into the fold should be the countrys top priority."