Agenda item

Report of Head of Democratic Services (Nottingham City Council)

Jonathan Rycroft, Head of Primary Care Area Team, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, informed the Committee that Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) were now responsible for commissioning general practice  contractors. The NHS is experiencing rising demand, with increased pressures on primary care and there was national concern regarding workforce challenges.

The Primary Care Challenge Fund offered new ways of working and new forms of access to improve patient satisfaction and convenience.  Locally across Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire over £5 million Challenge Fund funding had been awarded in wave one over a 12 month period serving a population of 1.4 million.

15 individual schemes had been evaluated with one scheme failing and five schemes received funding beyond September 2015 to complete robust evaluation before making further plans. The following points were highlighted:

(a)  Nottingham University’s Centre for Health Innovation, Leadership and Learning (CHILL) had been commissioned by NHS England to undertake a formative evaluation of the Prime Ministers Challenge Fund primary care transformation projects (PCTPs) locally;

(b)  A conference will be hosted in March 2016 to share the CHILL findings and CCGs will come together to consider the pilots and discuss upskilling;

(c)  a range of pilots had been delivered to reflect practices need, with two of the pilots already being mainstreamed;

(d)  the funding has been a high profile national project but the pilots have been set up by non-recurrent funding;

(e)  financial and workforce sustainability must be considered:

Following questions from Councillors, additional points were highlighted:

(f)  work is ongoing at a national level to develop 7 day NHS services;

(g)  quantitative pilot data was being uploaded nationally via a web based tool;

(h)  Committee members were concerned the CHILL report was out of date and did not give an overview of the pilots or the associated demographics;

(i)  CHILL was working with individual local pilot leads and had designed specific patient surveys covering broad objectives including patient accessibility, extending availability of services and patient satisfaction in order to understand local dynamics;

(j)  the pilots had enabled practices to design services around patient need and there had been closer working between practices, as it was acknowledged no one pilot would fit all;

(k)  there had been between a 20%-25% increase of patients being seen by GPs in 2014/15;

(l)  patient self - management was being promoted with information being made available for patients on practice websites;

(m)  it was suggested that Healthwatch could work more closely with CHILL regarding patient and family data;

(n)  further national guidance was awaited on patients accessing appropriate NHS services;

(o)  every GP practice has a Patient Participation Group and patients should contact these groups if practices are not performing;

(p)  Committee members raised concerns that although there was a national scheme to increase the role of Pharmacists in under doctored areas patients were facing long waiting times in Community Pharmacies and incorrect diagnosis and treatments were being made;

(o)  Committee members highlighted that primary care incorporated more than just GPs and the role of nurses was key;

(p)  to help alleviate pressures on primary care and educate young people  a School Education Programme had been developed within the city regarding NHS services; a smart phone app had also been developed. Nottingham City Council had invited students to participate in the development and findings were being shared with the Department of Health;

(q)  work is also taking place in the city to build public confidence in seeing other members of the primary care team rather than the GP.

RESOLVED to:

(1)  note the presentation;

(2)  receive a further update to the Committee in February 2016;

(3)  request that the final CHILL Evaluation Report be shared with the Committee.