Issue - meetings

To consider a verbal report from Fiona Field, Director of Governance and Strategic Planning at Central and Eastern Cheshire Primary Care Trust, on the Primary Care Trust’s Community Healthcare Project proposals.

Fiona Field, Director of Governance and Strategic Planning at Central and Eastern Cheshire Primary Care Trust (PCT) and Sue Noyce, Community Healthcare Re-design Project Lead, at the PCT briefed the Committee on the PCT’s project to develop health care services in Knutsford, Congleton and Northwich.

The project was based on developing community hospitals as a network that provided appropriate services away from secondary care and therefore closer to people’s homes.  The key aspects included:

      the development of modern primary care and community based hospital facilities in Knutsford, Congleton and Northwich;

      delivering care closer to home through the provision of flexible, integrated clinical services across the main towns in the PCT’s area;

      increasing access to a range of intermediate tier services in patients’ own homes and in purpose-built community bed facilities;

      increasing access to diagnostic and outpatient facilities in the community;

      community based mental health teams to support service users in their homes.

The benefits would include better integration of GP services with community nursing and secondary care, modern facilities that would attract the best staff; opportunities to develop new integrated services and developing home and community bed-based services that would be of particular benefit for older people.

The Department of Health had emphasised the importance of care being provided closer to people’s own homes or into their homes which was based on the changing demographic profile that would see increasing numbers of older people – the number of  people over 85 years of age was set to double by 2020.

The PCT had held a number of engagement events and the next stage was to appoint third party Development Partners with site identification and design options to be submitted for public consultation during the summer 2009. 

The Committee noted that a Task/Finish Panel had been established by the County Council to look at the project and the Panel had recommended that a representative of Knutsford Town Council be involved in the Panel in the future.  The Panel was chaired by Councillor R Fletcher.

RESOLVED:  That a Task/Finish Panel, chaired by Councillor R Fletcher, be set up to continue looking at the Primary Care Trust Future Health Care Project.