Agenda item

Presentation from Will Blandamer, Deputy Place Based Lead, NHS GM (Bury) and  Executive Director, Health and Adult Care, attached.

Will Blandamer gave a presentation giving an update on the elective care and cancer recovery programme.

The presentation included waiting times for appointments, national standards, waiting times for elective care for Bury patients at all providers and comparisons of RTT (referral to treatment) in specialities over 65 weeks and 78 weeks compared to GM.

It was explained that Dermatology, Trauma & Orthopaedic and ENT still have the highest proportion of total Bury Waiters in April. The highest proportion of 65 plus week waits are in Urology and Gynaecology .The highest proportion of 78 plus week waits are in Urology, ENT, Ophthalmology and other- Surgical Services all with 1 waiter.

There were 23 breaches of the 78 week standard at the end of March 2024, 12 of these were due to patient choice, 8 were capacity breaches and 3 were clinically complex.

Diagnostic services performance was good for Bury residents and the NCA were working through challenges.

With regards to performance in relation to cancer diagnosis and treatment it was reported that the Integrated Care Board were working closely with the NCA on access to treatment over 62 and a higher percentage of patients receiving diagnosis within the 28 day Faster Diagnosis Standard.

Will explained that the teledermatology appointments in Salford had gone live in October 2023, the impact on performance was positive with over 1600 patients attending an appointment

The impact was set out as follows; time to first appointment 13-14 days saved, time to FDS communication 7-8 days saved,  FDS performance improved from 49.8% in October to sustained delivery of the standard since December.

The planning objectives and the work programme were set out within the presentation.

Members were given the opportunity to ask questions and make comments and the following points were raised:

·         Councillor Duncalfe asked whether GPs were encouraged to refer patients for elective treatment in locality or whether treatment options further afield were considered.

It was explained that there should be no barriers to where elective services were carried out and all options should be considered.

·         Councillor Boles referred to the current campaign being promoted reminding patients to bring their own medicine when being admitted into hospital and asked if information around this could be shared with elected members.

Will confirmed that this information would be shared after the meeting.

·         Councillor Rubinstein asked whether there was any evidence of figures being manipulated to make it look like waiting times were less than they were.

Will explained that he didn’t believe that this kind of practice was happening across the Northern Care Alliance. There was no evidence to suggest that this occurred. Adrian Crook explained that there were 522,000 patients on waiting lists in Greater Manchester, to manipulate the figures would take a considerable amount of work and there would be no benefit to doing so.

Councillor Tariq stated that if patients were concerned that they had been removed from a waiting list they could contact their local Healthwatch who would support them with any issues.

It was agreed:

1.    That Will be thanked for the update.

2.    That an update be brought to a future meeting of the Committee in 2025.