Issue - meetings

Dr. John Radford to present

Further to Minute No. 165 of the meeting of the Cabinet held on 15^th January, 2014, consideration was given to a report presented by the Director of Public Health concerning the Council’s statutory functions for health protection and health improvement.  Public Health England monitored the responsibilities through the Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF). Members were informed of arrangements for monitoring of the Framework and the action being taken to address the outcomes.

The Council’s wider responsibilities for population health required a co-ordinated approach, involving all partner organisations. The PHOF focused on the causes of premature mortality.  The Rotherham Health and Wellbeing Strategy supported early intervention and prevention as part of improving performance against the PHOF and the key lifestyle factors that influenced avoidable mortality. The Outcomes Framework had to be reviewed quarterly to monitor improvements in performance.  Public Health would lead this agenda and report to Cabinet by exception. Priority measures included those for avoidable mortality, which also featured as a key outcome for the Integrated Transformation Fund.

Public Health would agree with partner’s action plans to address under-performance and complete a report card on each indicator. Where the Indicator was an outlier, the report card would be submitted to the appropriate planning or commissioning group.

It was noted that agreement needed to be reached on which performance measures were regularly reported to the Health and Wellbeing Board.  These should be indicators which were closely linked to the six locally determined priorities which followed the Health and Wellbeing Strategy. If these high level indicators showed no improvement or were significantly underperforming, the Health and Wellbeing Board would agree actions to be taken or hold a performance clinic with partners to develop a remedial action plan to engage action.  Where a performance clinic was held, the issue would be reported to Cabinet. The emphasis of the performance clinics would be on innovation and doing things differently, to facilitate improvement and change.

The Indicators not included in the top six strategic issues would be addressed elsewhere within the local performance framework.  The actions would re-focus activity on the early intervention and prevention agenda for long term and sustainable impact.  The submitted report provided a framework for this process and summarised the early progress being made.

Specific reference was made to:-

-          life expectancy and healthy life expectancy – causes of mortality and disability:

-          reward grant in 2015-16 to local authorities being most successful regarding health inequalities, based on the outcomes framework

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

(2) That the proposed framework and reporting structures to address performance on the Public Health Outcomes Framework, as described in the report now submitted, be noted.

(3) That the use of the Public Health Outcomes Framework as a mechanism to deliver the Health and Wellbeing Strategy’s aim of moving services to prevention and early intervention be noted.