At the request of the Committee Mr Rob Sainsbury, Chief Operating Officer of New Devon Clinical Commissioning Group will be in attendance to answer questions.
Minutes:
The Chairman welcomed Caroline Dawe, Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Northern Eastern Planning and Delivery Unit of the Clinical Commissioning Group to the meeting.
Ms Dawe gave a brief synopsis of the current situation, explaining that the Success Regime had been put in place as a partnership because of financial challenges. The Success Regime had been working for the last 18 months and from the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) perspective had undertaken a vast programme of work. The scheme was projected to start being more strategic and had delivered a financial programme. Then the Sustainable Transformation Plan (STP) was introduced which involved health working as a system with all of its partners, Devon County Council (DCC), acute providers, community providers and the Ambulance Service. This started to supersede but involve the work of the Success Regime. As part of the STP an overarching framework was put in place, which was available to view on the website. This document set out what the objectives were of each programme. Each programme was at a different stage, some were at workshop stage to understand best practice. ‘Where your Future Care’ sat within one of the seven work streams as integrated local care. This was about redesigning community services, district nurses and primary care, a cohesive set of community services to wrap around patients, ensuring they worked closely with social care providers to prevent admissions. Your Future Care was the first part of this programme which required three stages; comprehensive assessment to identify needs, the setting up of a single point of access and sufficient rapid responses to prevent people going into hospital. Your Future Care had been out to consultation and results were currently being collated. There had been a significant number of responses and attendance at engagement events.
Ms Dawe explained that levels of service currently varied throughout the area.
Discussion took place regarding:
· Bed-blocking and the reduction in community hospital beds; Ms Dawe explained that the beds that had been closed had not been in the right place and did not provide the right services. The CCG had been able to demonstrate that patients stayed longer in community beds than they did if they received more acute care followed by support at home. Community hospitals were relevant but needed to be equipped. Longer stays in hospital were not good for the patient in the longer term. The contract for ‘Living Well at Home’ led by DCC along with the CCG provided services across the area to manage social care for those staying at home. Work so far had been considered successful and the number of patients helped positive. Optimisation of beds, general efficiencies, good practice and diagnostics helped to get patients out of hospital sooner, reducing dependency, improving performance and flow through the hospital.
· Crediton and the need for hospital beds for patients from the area to be provided in Exeter rather than Tiverton or Okehampton to make allowance for local transport links;
· Hubs – A Hub was planned for Crediton and Ms Dawe explained that there was no blue-print as to what the Hub would be. Hubs in the area were at different stages of development and needed to be relevant to the community.
· Staffing – Royal Devon and Exeter (RDE) had a new model of care and would be introducing a new basic level nurse to work in the community.
· The need for paperwork for District Nurses to be reduced in order that they could spend more time dealing with patients.
· Good work that was happening in the community and the tendency to listen to anecdotal negative tales and not the thousands of hours of care that were working well.
· The need for authorities to work with the NHS to ensure that housing provision was appropriate for the population;
· The need to increase usage of Tiverton Hospital and changes to contract arrangements there.
The Chairman highlighted consultation that was taking place regarding the Sustainable Transformation Programme at the New Hall Tiverton on 6th March from 10.30am to 12.30.
Ms Dawe apologised that other agencies such as DCC had not been able to attend the meeting with her and offered to return at a later date if required.
The Chairman thanks Ms Dawe for her attendance.
Supporting documents: