Issue - meetings

Consideration was given to a report presented by Janet Spurling, Scrutiny Officer, which provided an overview of the current NHS England “Improving General Practice – a Call to Action” consultation which would set the context of the above Scrutiny Review.

GP Primary Care Services were commissioned by NHS England through the local area team – NHS South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw.  Although the standard appointment time to see a GP should be 48 hours, waiting times were perceived to be much longer in many cases.  Evidence provided for the Urgent Care workshop included a survey of 166 patients who attended the Walk in Centres in January, 2013, that showed that before attending the Centre 35% of patients had tried to get a GP appointment, 26% had taken over the counter medicines and 21% of people had not accessed any services before attending.  Other consultation by the CCG had also highlighted public confusion about where to go for what health problem.

NHSE was currently undertaking a large scale consultation “Improving General Practice – a Call to Action” to inform the future of general practice services in England as part of its wider consultation launched on 11^th July, 2013.

The National G.P. Patient Survey Information contained a number of questions and a short presentation on some of the responses received was delivered to the Commission.

The information received from the responses from the survey would be used to inform decisions made as a result of practices requesting changes to their contracts such as:-

·                Temporary Closing Lists.

·                Mergers with Other Practices.

·                Branch Site Closures.

·                Changes to Opening Hours.

·                Changes to Practice Boundaries.

It was also noted that NHS England also commissioned “extended hours” which in Rotherham mean twenty-nine out of thirty-six practices provided extended hours outside of core hours, which in turn provided an additional ninety-two hours and five hundred and fifty one appointments, in addition to those provided during core hours.

The Commission welcomed this evidence, but expressed some concern that there was still 1:4 people waiting a significant period of see a G.P., but only 57% of people knew how to contact an out-of-hours G.P. service.  It would also have been useful to know how many G.P. surgeries offered open surgeries and the detail behind some of the questions in order to understand the position locally.

It was suggested that the review group set up to look at this area be provided with a breakdown for each surgery to understand the problems people were facing, if any, which would assist and feed into the work being undertaken.

Resolved:-  (1)  That the report be received and the contents noted.

(2)  That the membership of the review group include Councillors Dalton, Hoddinott (Chair), Middleton and Wootton.

(3)  That any comments arising from the report be forward onto the review group for consideration and inclusion in the scope of the review.

(4)  That the review group consider submitting a collective response to the on-line NHSE consultation.