Hello my name is Ian….

This week has been all about community conversations. On Tuesday we met with the chairs of public involvement panels from across the area, including Chair of Bradford’s People’s Board, Chair of the District's Patient Network, hospital trust governors, clinical commissioning group lay members, Healthwatch, councils and Yorkshire MESMAC. The purpose of the meeting was to find out more about our partnership, and work together to think about how we can work more closely with communities as our partnership develops. It was a good first step in terms of getting people up to speed on what our partnership covers and why public conversations, community voices, and getting people involved is very important to us.

There were some great conversations taking place and some really valuable insights, including the need for honesty about the choices we face in response to the financial pressures on the system, the role of carers, closing the loop on engagement and consultation, being willing to actively listen and a discussion around how we want to change the relationship we have with communities.

We want to build on this and will be writing to attendees to seek support in the design and development of a panel (or whatever people think would be meaningful) and looking at how we can co-design something with young people who have an interest in health and care – for whatever reason.

It’s really important that the work we do is representative of the communities we serve and yesterday gave us a good foundation to build on. There is much to do and we’re very clearly at the start of a journey. It’s not too late to get involved - so if you, or someone you know, from a public panel wants to get involved please get in touch.

A copy of the presenters’ slides can be viewed here.

Today [Friday 20 April], we will be meeting with Kim Leadbeater, who is Jo Cox’s sister and Ian Hepplewhite as part of the Jo Cox Foundation and more in common movement, which includes the Great Get Together which will be taking place on the 22nd – 24th June.The foundation are asking people across the country to organise and attend events that help us Get Together – young and old, north and south.

The foundation believes we can all play our part in getting people together. 83% of people who took part last year said they met someone new at an event – an important step in the right direction to tackle loneliness.

We know that many areas of a person’s life affects their health and wellbeing, for example employment and housing and this June, the foundation’s volunteers we’ll bring different communities together in many ways, from school assemblies on the Friday through to rugby matches on the Sunday. You can found out more about the work here

Have a good weekend

Ian

What else has been happening this week?

Urgent and Emergency Care Programme Board

Our programme board met on Monday. This is chaired by Dr Adam Sheppard.

The first draft of our next steps document was shared for comments. This is about keeping patients and clinicians central to our work, ensuring any service developments add value in our communities’ eyes and stressing the importance of having urgent care centres with the right expertise as medicine advances. We know that urgent care providers are under extreme pressure and the board acknowledged and thanked colleagues for their continued work on this important agenda. We will do all we can to be even more prepared for next winter. This includes working with our local accident and emergency delivery boards to ensure we continually drive improvements and service sustainability.

There was also a discussion around learning from GP streaming in accident and emergency departments, which is all about people with non-emergency needs being seen by a primary care clinician (for example a GP or community nurse).Next month the board will discuss the positive difference extended GP access brings to urgent care.

We are now ready to begin a 111 re-procurement programme across Yorkshire and Humber. The approach was discussed and agreed at the Joint Strategic Commissioning Board also held this week and we aim to have the new contract (telephony and clinical advise service) mobilised by April 2019.

Elective Care and Standardisation of Commissioning Policies

The programme board met on Tuesday. The board is chaired by Matt Walsh. The board is made up of colleagues from health services, public health and Healthwatch. Progress is being made on standardising commissioning policies with a focus on elective orthopaedics (bones and joints) and ophthalmology (eye care) over the coming months. The eye care working group also met this week to discuss the work agreed by the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Joint Committee in March 2018, with Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Groups giving a presentation on the work they’re doing around community based services as an example of transforming eye care. Colleagues are also meeting with the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (hospitals working together) to discuss programme planning between commissioners and providers.

Maternity care

The Maternity Voices Partnerships Task and Finish Group met today. This includes midwives, health visitors and representatives from our communities. We have submitted our draft maternity care plan for our area and are waiting on feedback from NHS England. A key focus of our plan is personalisation, continuity of care and safety. The group talked about the importance of co-production with women, their partners and families. There was an update on the successful bid by Calderdale and Leeds Hospital Trusts for the electronic patient held record pilot to be used in maternity services.

We have also recently invited members of the public to attend the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Local Maternity System Board meetings to give valuable insight into any decision making. We have also extended the invite to a voluntary and community organisation lead.

Finally, heads of midwifery from across the area will come together next week to look at the ambitions of the workforce.

Local Health and Care Record Exemplar bid (LHCRE)

The aim of the LHCRE programme is to create an information sharing environment that helps our health and care services continually improve the treatments we use, whilst ensuring that care is tailored to the needs of each person and empowers people to make informed choices about their health and care. Each regional LHCRE will build on local solutions already in place to create a more joined up health and care information system. The requirement will be for all our NHS and social care organisations to contribute to this ambition.

We have now:

  • Agreed to deliver a CHIME (College of Healthcare Information Management Executives) digital health leadership programme to the informatics cohort involved in the bid. This will provide the Yorkshire and Humber cohort with access to internationally recognised development and learning, the outcome of which will be a new professionalised and joined up culture to informatics leadership across the region.
  • Agreement with Greater Manchester and Salford and regions of Bristol to share content developed for the bid to ensure a more joined up approach can be achieved in its creation, one that references other regions and plays to the development of a ‘System of Systems’.

Our work to engage clinicians and care providers in the bid is continuing and meetings across Yorkshire and Humber have taken place to enable the strong clinical case needed for a successful bid. To ensure we have the right foundations in place for a LHCRE a ‘Clinical and Technical Design Authority’ (CTDA) has been created to make sure the patient and clinical requirement drives the development of the LHCRE response. The CTDA will consist of clinical leads, technical experts, suppliers and citizens and it is being set up by Nicola Haywood-Alexander, Digital Programme Director, South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Shadow Integrated Care System (ICS).

Our bid is to be submitted by Wednesday 25 April with the successful regions being announced in mid-May. Please contact lee.rickles@nhs.net for more information.

Digital

Digital achievement to improve health and care in Leeds: colleagues in Leeds have developed an interactive digital achievements roadmap for 2017/18, which sets out the project and the organisation. You can view it here

What’s happening next week?

  • The stroke programme meets on Wednesday, chaired by Dr Andy Withers.
  • The Directors of Finance Group meets on Wednesday.
  • On Thursday the memorandum of understanding editorial group will meet.
  • West Yorkshire and Harrogate communication and engagement network meets on Thursday.