Tonight's "Working together" meeting cancelled due to snow

Due to adverse weather conditions (e.g. roads not being safe in parts of the county due to heavy snow and police advice not to travel) the NHS "Working Together" steering group meeting which had been due to take place at Allerdale House, Workington at 6pm this evening HAS BEEN CANCELLED.

The meeting will be rescheduled and notice of the new date, time and venue given in the near future.

Cumbria Health Scrutiny meeting

I spent much of today at the Cumbria Health Scrutiny meeting in Carlisle.

I will have more to write this week about what was an extremely interesting meeting, for which the  full agenda including reports is available here.

As a taster, here are what the Morecombe Bay NHS (covering an area which includes South Cumbria and part of Lancashire) describes as "The five hard truths" which they are seeking to address and about which they have started a process of "public engagement."

(They are not, incidentally, at this stage making any definitive proposals to deal with this and do not expect to put forward any service closures or redundancies when they do put such proposals forward.)

"The five hard truths are:

1. Too much of the NHS budget is now spent on treating a number of health conditions that are largely preventable and some of these issues lie outside the NHS. We are spending on ‘cure’ and ‘follow up’ rather than prevention.

2. Despite an active recruitment drive the recruitment of clinical staff is challenging, especially in some specialties in the hospital, in community services and in general practice. We spend significant amounts of money on locums, agency staff and have to pay over the odds’ for staff to provide ‘fragile services’ in Morecambe Bay

3. The best bed is often your own bed –for some people being in hospital can lead to deterioration in health e.g. muscle wastage. Some people`s length of stay in a hospital bed is longer than the national average. We also know that there will always be people who do need to be in hospital.

4. The demand on all health and care services continues to increase e.g. on GPs, on community nurses etc. “winter pressures” are often faced all year round. At home not everyone in Morecambe Bay has easy access to transport, good living conditions, or care and support from family and friends. For those family and friend who are carers looking after vulnerable people, this can cause pressure and in turn affect their health.

5. There are areas of waste and duplicated spend in some areas e.g. variations in prescribing, spending on running duplicate clinical and ‘back office’ services across many sites and different buying processes. "

More detailed report on the meeting to follow.

Learning lessons

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt had an article in the telegraph this week on improving patient safety which makes some points we can all take on board about how we can all work together to make the NHS a global leader in learning lessons and removing risks to health.

February meeting of the Cumbria Health Scrutiny Committee - Monday 26th Feb 2018

The next meeting of the Cumbria Health Scrutiny Committee will held on Monday 26th February at 10.30 am at Cumbria House, Botchergate, Carlisle, and will be open to the public.

After the usual boilerplate (apologies for absence, minutes of previous meeting, etc) the first major item on the agenda, item six, is the presentation of a report from the Chief Executive of the CCG (The clinical commissioning group) for North Cumbria NHS.

This will include details of the 12 month trial of "Option One" Consultant-led maternity at West Cumberland Hospital as reconfigured following the 2016 Success regime consultation:

	HealthCare for the Future Update PDF 199 KB Report by the Chief Executive, NHS North Cumbria Clinical Commissioning Group The other main items on the morning's agenda are as follows:
7.	Communications and Engagement Programme - Bay Health and Care Partners PDF 259 KB To consider a report by the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust.
8.	Better Care Together Update PDF 141 KB To consider a report by Morecambe Bay Clinical Commissioning Group.
9.	Helme Chase Midwife Led Maternity Unit PDF 241 KB To consider a report by Morecambe Bay Clinical Commissioning Group.

Then after lunch, resuming at about 1.30pm, the main items for consideration are:

10.	Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (South) PDF 652 KB To consider a report by the Programme Director for South Cumbria and Lancashire STP.
11.	North West Ambulance Service - Care Quality Commission Improvement Plan and Use of Other Agencies PDF 143 KB To consider a report by the North West Ambulance Service.

The full agenda including reports is available here.

Date agreed for 12 month trial for WCH maternity service

The Clinical Commissioning Group has now agreed the dates for the 12 month period to test the sustainability and safety of Consultant-led maternity at West Cumberland Hospital (WCH)

Members of the Governing Body were keen to emphasise that this is not merely a stay of execution for the service. It is a timescale for the sustainability and safety of the service to be considered.

It was agreed by members of NHS North Cumbria Clinical Commissioning Group’s (CCG) Governing Body that the 12 month period for testing the ability to deliver consultant-led maternity services at the West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven will start in April.

Following the "Healthcare For The Future public consultation" the decision was made by the CCG to support the delivery of consultant-led care at the West Cumberland Hospital with some mothers who may potentially have higher risk babies delivered at the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle.

It was suggested at the time that there would be plans to test the sustainability of the service over a 12 month period, but that period was not started while the outcome of a "call-in" by Cumbria County Council's health scrutiny committee was under consideration. That was finally resolved at the end of 2017.

Over the past year a "Working Together Steering Group" (WTG) and other working groups have been set up involving the community, third sector, frontline health and care staff, as well as system leaders, to support the wider efforts to sustain the service through what has been called "co-production."

An Independent Review Group (IRG) has also been established. This is a panel made up of independent clinical experts chaired by Dr Bill Kirkup, which will assess progress over the 12 months.

Jon Rush, chair of the CCG, said:

“It is already 11 months since we made the decision. There has been considerable work within the service to prepare for the implementation of Option 1 and a huge amount of work by the community to help tackle these long standing recruitment issues.

“But the challenges we faced have not gone away and the uncertainty is not helping this fragile service. The decision to start this 12 month period will allow some certainty.

“The CCG has always been – and remains – committed to doing everything possible to provide consultant-led services at Whitehaven.”