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.