Agenda and minutes

To approve the minutes of the Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee meeting held on 8 May 2014.

RESOLVED – That the minutes of the Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee meeting held on 8 May be approved as a correct record.

To provide an opportunity for Members and Officers to declare any disclosable pecuniary and non-pecuniary interests in any item on the agenda.

There were no declarations of interest

To provide an opportunity for Members to declare the existence of a party whip in relation to any item on the agenda.

There were no declarations of party whip

A total period of 15 minutes is allocated for members of the public to make a statement(s) on any matter that falls within the remit of the Committee.

Individual members of the public may speak for up to 5 minutes, but the Chairman will decide how the period of time allocated for public speaking will be apportioned, where there are a number of speakers.

Note: in order for officers to undertake and background research, it would be helpful if members of the public notified the Scrutiny officer listed at the foot of the Agenda at least one working day before the meeting with brief details of the matter to be covered.

There were no members of the public present who wished to speak

To consider whether proposals to develop services by Clatterbridge Cancer Centre are deemed to be a substantial development or variation (SDV) in services provided to the residents of Cheshire East

The Committee was requested to respond to consultation from Clatterbridge Cancer Centre (CCC) on proposals to build a new facility in Liverpool. James Morley provided a brief overview of the proposals and the process for the consultation.

As the proposed development of services was considered to be substantial the law required CCC to formally consult each local authority area affected by the development. Those authorities which considered the development to be substantial were required to create a joint overview and scrutiny committee to consider the proposals and respond to the consultation on behalf of all authorities.

The Committee was informed that the number of patients from Cheshire East that would be affected by this development was very small and the development was therefore not considered to be substantial to the area. It was recommended that the Committee inform CCC and the other affected local authorities that it did not consider the development to be substantial for Cheshire East therefore the authority would not take part in any joint overview and scrutiny committee formed to respond to the consultation.

RESOLVED – That in consultation with the Chairman the Scrutiny Officer be asked to respond to the consultation informing Clatterbridge Cancer Centre that the Committee does not believe the proposed development of service to be a substantial development to the Cheshire East area and therefore the authority will not take any part in a joint overview and scrutiny committee formed by other authorities.

To examine the draft Quality Account 2013/14 of North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust and provide comments to be submitted to the Trust for consideration and inclusion in the final Quality Account

The Committee considered the draft quality account for North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust for 2013/14. Tim Butcher, Assistant Director of Performance Improvement at the Trust, presented the draft quality account highlighting the key priorities of the Trust and some of its achievements this year.

The Committee asked questions and the following points were made:

·         The Committee supported the Trust’s Right Care, Right Time, Right Place approach to providing the best outcomes for patients.

·         The Committee acknowledged the significant improvements the Trust had made to services in previous years when services hadn’t be up to an acceptable standard. This level of performance needed to be maintained and improved further.

·         The Committee suggested the eight minute response time target was unrealistic for many of the rural areas of Cheshire East and perhaps a more realistic target be established specifically for rural areas to measure response times for rural areas more effectively.

·         The Committee wished to see greater detail in relation to response times across Cheshire East to analyse were there were issues and whether it could recommend any initiatives to improve response times in those areas.

·         The Committee believed that the First Responder Service had helped to improve outcomes for patients in the borough and that it should be developed further.

·         The Committee was encouraged to learn that the Trust was prioritising the improvement of care provided to patients with dementia and supported the seven statements in the National Dementia Declaration.

·         The Committee wanted consideration to be given to giving elderly people in need of an ambulance greater priority in cases where they had become incapacitated and not been discovered for hours because they lived alone.

·         While the Committee appreciated the benefit of greater reporting of incidents of infection risk, it wanted the Trust to demonstrate a reduction in incidents (reported or not) and that cleanliness and infection prevention had improved.

·         The Committee supported the “choose well” initiative being carried out by the CCGs and suggested the Council could assist in publicising the practice to reduce inappropriate demand for ambulances.

·         While the Committee believed the Trust needed to do more to reduce the number of patients taken to A&E it recognised the need for the Trust partners and communities to do more to provide alternatives to A&E.

·         The Committee recognised the growing problem obesity and the demand for bariatric care was causing for ambulance services.

RESOLVED – That in consultation with the Chairman the Scrutiny Officer be requested to draft a letter from the Committee to North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust in response to the Trust’s draft Quality Account.

To examine the draft Quality Account 2013/14 of Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and provide comments to be submitted to the Trust for consideration and inclusion in the final Quality Account

The Committee considered the draft Quality Account for Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust for 2013/14. Lisa Parker, Quality Support Manager for the Trust, presented the quality account and highlighted some of the Trust’s priorities and achievements during 2013/14.

The Committee asked questions and the following points were made:

·         The Committee acknowledged the Trust’s success stories including being finalists in the Patient Safety Awards and involvement in the Patients Safety First campaign.

·         While the Committee recognised that the Trust had achieved most of its targets it noted that the targets set were worryingly low and that actual performance was still short of where it would like the Trust to be. The Committee hoped that in future targets would be higher and performance would be much greater.

·         The Committee suggested that while there was a mandatory minimum of information required in the quality account it would have benefited from having much more detailed information about many aspects of performance.

·         The Committee would have been less concerned by the areas where the Trust had fallen short of its targets had an explanation for the short fall and an understanding of how improvements could be made in future been included in the quality account.

·         The Committee wanted to see more detailed information and statistics about individual communities in the Borough to enable it to identify areas where there may have been issues that it could work with the Trust and other partners to address.

·         The Committee was interested in being provided with financial information from the Trust to consider whether there were any issues regarding an under provision of funding for mental health services and whether it could work with commissioners to improve funding and outcomes for patients.

RESOLVED – That in consultation with the Chairman the Scrutiny Officer be requested to draft a letter from the Committee to Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust in response to the Trust’s Quality Account.

To review the current Work Programme

The Committee considered its work programme. The items in the work programme had been inherited by the Committee from the previous Health and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee. As the Committee’s remit included adult social care and leisure as well as health the Members were asked to give consideration to adding items relating to those areas to the health related items already in the work programme. The following suggestions were made for inclusion in the work programme:

·         Briefing from the Strategic Director of Commissioning on the Better Care Fund.

·         Task and finish review to look at a strategy for Assistive Technology with the following membership:

o   Councillors J Saunders, L Jeuda and C Andrew.

·         Briefing from the Director of Public Health on the take up of health screening and its benefits.

·         Report on ambulance service response items in the Borough.

·         Report on funding of the Cheshire and Wirral Partnership and mental health statistics at local community level.

RESOLVED – That the Work Programme be updated to include the items discussed during the meeting.