Issue - meetings

Jacqui Tuffnell, Head of Co-Commissioning, Rotherham Clinical Commissioning Group, to present

Jacqui Tuffnell, Head of Co-Commissioning, Rotherham Clinical Commissioning Group (RCCG), gave a powerpoint presentation on the Primary Care update:-

·           From April, 2015, the RCCG had taken on delegated responsibility for GP practices but not for the whole of Primary Care.  There was the potential for conflicts of interests

·           The Primary Care Sub-Committee met in public on a monthly basis, the meeting papers for which were available on the website.  The Sub-Committee was Chaired by a Lay Member and was made up of members of the RCCG and 3 GPs who were elected to sit on the Sub-Committee to provide advice.  At the point of making a decision, the GPs would leave the room

·           A big piece of work that needed to take place was to set the GP Strategy for Rotherham.  There would only be 1 plan which would align with other strategies such as the Health and Wellbeing Strategy and the Commissioning Strategy.  There were 10 key priorities

-               Quality Driven Services

Services were “RAG” rated so a warning would be received as to which practice’s performance was raising concern.  This was the first time this had been seen and Rotherham was paving the way.  It enabled bench marking of practices as well as the sharing of good practice with others.  The LLP gave practices the opportunity to look at working together rather than in silos.  Work was starting on looking at new models of delivery regarding the integration of Health and Social Care and what possible models could look like

-               Services as local possible

There were a number of challenges associated with this priority.  Rotherham was around the national benchmark level for Doctors but new ways of managing patients were being explored including a new role of associate physician to support GPs in practice and looking at the wider health workforce including pharmacists and therapists. 

The RCCG was also looking at using IT and technology such as Skype.  The Emergency Centre would integrate urgent care and out of hours care seamlessly.

-               Equality of Service Provision

Dependent upon where you lived and the size of your practice, there could be real inequality in relation to the Services provided.  Encouragement was being given to having “baskets” of Services through co-operation between practices so that if a practice did not deliver a particular Service it may be that the practice down the road could do so on their behalf thereby ensuring everyone received the same service.  Some of the commissioning arrangements around Public Health were due to the way it had been divided up; the RCCG wanted to stop those barriers and all work together and avoid whose responsibility for commissioning services

-               Increasing Capacity and Capability

It was hoped that there would be 5,000 more GPs nationally.  Currently once trained, many Doctors opted not to go into GP practice.  It was felt that it should be made easier for those coming back into the country to start practising again as currently you had to retrain to certain degree.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6