Agenda item

An update will be given at the Meeting

Stuart North, Chief Executive at Bury Clinical Commissioning Group attended the meeting to update the Committee on the progress made in relation to the Healthier Together programme, the Paediatric Observation and Assessment Unit at Fairfield General Hospital and the work of the Clinical Commissioning Group.

It was reported that the work relating to Healthier Together was ongoing and focussing on the outline models of care for integrated care, primary care, models of care for hospitals – Urgent and emergency, acute medicine, general surgery, children’s services and women’s services. The need for change was required because of the budgetary pressures facing the NHS alongside the fact that demand for services was increasing and the clinical workforce is limited.

Stuart reported that he had attended a meeting with the Leader of the Council Councillor – Mike Connolly, the Chief Executive of the Council – Mike Kelly and Dr Kiran Patel from the CCG, they had met with John Saxby – Chief Executive at Pennine Acute NHS Trust, Martin Roe – Acting Chief Executive at Pennine Care NHS Trust and Michael McCourt – Director of Operations at Pennine Care. Stuart explained that this meeting had been held to discuss the future of health provision in Bury and for the CCG and Council to set out what their requirements were. The meeting had enabled the CCG and Council to make the point that services at Fairfield General Hospital need to be provided at a similar level to what they are currently.

It was anticipated that there would be a change in what services were provided at the hospitals across the region as it was likely that some hospitals would lose some general services whilst retaining specialist ones. A level of basic provision would be maintained at all hospital sites.

Stuart also reported that the Radcliffe Pilot had been announced which would provide better access to health and social care services in Radcliffe by providers working together to provide enhanced services for longer periods of time across the town. The service would be that all practices would take turns to open out of hours on a rota and they would have access to shared records. The opening hours would give access from 8am to 8pm on weekdays and 8am to 6pm on weekends. It was explained that this would be rolled out across all localities with different solutions being researched for different areas.

Stuart also explained that the target allocations for CCGs had been published in September with the calculations showing that Bury was £20m under funded. Stuart stated that he had written to Sir David Nicholson to ask that this situation be rectified.

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

• Councillor Smith referred to the Healthier Together programme and the ‘red’ and ‘green’ hospitals and asked whether this concept had now been dropped.

Stuart reported that the concept was still being used it was just the terminology that had been dropped.

• Councillor Bury explained that he had attended a meeting where Healthier Together had presented and they had stated that it would be a long movement from one system to another so some services would be double running at some point.

Stuart explained that this was not the understanding that he had and he would request an answer from Healthier Together in relation to this issue.

• Councillor Smith asked what safety nets would be in place when the systems/service provision changed.

Stuart explained that risk was a factor that needed to be considered and these would be looked at during the implementation planning processes.

Stuart reported that the Paediatric Observation and Assessment Unit at Fairfield General Hospital had been temporarily closed during winter 2012/2013 and had been reopened in May 2103. The reason for the closure had been to disperse staff to other sites at Royal Oldham Hospital and North Manchester General Hospital where extra winter beds had been opened.

Since the unit had reopened in May there had been an average of 2 patients per day being treated. A recruitment exercise had taken place where 19 posts had been advertised but only 3 had been filled successfully.

There was now a need to open extra winter beds across the region and it was proposed that this could be facilitated by dispersing staff to the Oldham and North Manchester Sites as was done last winter to allow for the 5 extra beds to be opened and staffed sufficiently.

Stuart explained that this would be a temporary measure but could possibly become permanent in the future. If this was the case the Committee would be consulted.

It was agreed:

That Stuart be thanked for his presentation.