Agenda and minutes

RESOLVED that Councillor Ms Phillips be elected Chairman of the Health Overview and Scrutiny Panel for the 2015/16 Municipal Year.

COUNCILLOR MS PHILLIPS IN THE CHAIR

RESOLVED that Councillor Mrs McCracken be appointed Vice-Chairman of the Health Overview and Scrutiny Panel for the 2015/16 Municipal Year.

The Panel noted the attendance of the following substitute members:

Councillor Allen for Councillor G Birch

Councillor Peacey for Councillor Thompson

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meeting of the Health Overview and Scrutiny Panel held on 12 March 2015.

RESOLVED  that the minutes of the Health Overview and Scrutiny Panel meeting held on 12 March 2015 be approved as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

There were no declarations of interest nor any indications that Members would be participating under the party whip.

There were no urgent items of business.

There were no submissions under the Council’s Public Participation Scheme for Overview and Scrutiny.

To receive updates from the Chief Executive of the South Central Ambulance Service on the Trust’s performance and future plans.

The Chairman welcomed Will Hancock, Chief Executive, and Paul Jefferies, Berkshire Area Manager, South Central Ambulance Service Trust to the meeting to provide an update on the Trust’s performance and future plans.  The chairman commented on the initiative taken by Bracknell Forest councillors to equip 47 community locations with defibrillators.

An overview was given of the work taking place to improve performance in respect of the 999 response times.  It was reported that the Trust received approximately 35,000 RED1 999 calls, where patients presented with life threatening conditions and a target response time had been set of under 8 minutes, a month and the Trust was consistently in the top 75 percentile for its response times for these calls.  In the period April 2014 to April 2015 the Trust was able to have a clinically safe transportable vehicle on scene within 19 minutes in 92% of Red 1 and Red 2 cases (compared to a target of 80%).  There had been one RED2 incident in Bracknell Forest which had been classified as not receiving an appropriate clinical response within 30 minutes of the call being received.  This case had been fully audited to review the location of resources at the time of the call, the patient records, and clinical observations to ascertain the circumstances of the case and to identify learning.

The Trust had undertaken a significant amount of work to train paramedics so that they were able to provide appropriate treatment and referral services on the spot for example wound care a move that had reduced the number of patients requiring transport to hospital.  Changes had also been made to the way that incoming 999 calls were clinically triaged and the 999 service now used the NHS Pathways ICT system used by the 111 service.  This meant that call handlers had greater opportunity to provide appropriate clinical advice and were able to signpost callers to alternative services when appropriate.

Falls were the most common reason for care homes to call out an ambulance and at a local level, the Trust had been evaluating the way that care homes within Bracknell Forest had been utilising the Ambulance Service with a view to reducing the number of non-elective admissions by 10%.  As part of this work the Trust had approached the Council’s falls lead and the Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’s Locality Manager about the possibility of implementing a ‘Falls Tool’ which had been designed to empower care homes to assess patients themselves.  This tool had been in use in Hampshire for a number of years and the area had seen a 60% fall in the number of calls from care homes using the tool following its introduction.  Areas for future development included work to raise awareness amongst care home staff and healthcare professionals of the signs and symptoms of infection.

Arising from the Panel’s questions and comments the following points were noted:

·         The Trust’s main financial challenge came from growing demand for its services, a trend which was accelerating.  This  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8.

The Director of Adult Social Care, Health and Housing will provide an introductory briefing in respect of the Department’s role and functions in relation to health, which are described in the Service Plan.  The Executive Member for Health has been invited to set out his priorities for health over the next four years.

The Executive Member for Adult Social Care, Health and Housing gave the Panel a briefing on his priorities for health over the next four years.  It was stressed that the Council’s main objective in the area of health, reflecting the vision of the Health and Wellbeing strategy,  would be to invest in the long term health of residents and develop services that worked to keep people as healthy as possible for as long as possible with a focus on prevention rather than intervention.

The key areas of work to be focused on would include:

·         Drug and alcohol dependency

·         Obesity

·         Falls prevention

·         Delivering the work packages incorporated into the Better Care Fund to help prevent people needing to attend the accident and emergency department

·         Make better use of IT to measure outcomes and assess the success or otherwise of interventions

·         Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and mental health services

·         GP surgeries and community based care facilities

·         Bring about behaviour change both internally and externally to encourage self care and self help where appropriate

·         Prevention of funding being pulled out of the Borough and used to support work in other areas

It was stressed that funding pressures meant that it would be impossible to achieve everything and that any work would need to be prioritised.  Any decisions would be evidence based and if work wasn’t considered a high enough priority then it would not be progressed.

The Interim Director of Adult Social Care, Health and Housing summarised the scope and purpose of the departmental service plan, progress against which was provided in the Quarterly Service Reports.

To consider parts of the Quarter 4 2014/15 (January to March 2015) quarterly service report of the Adult Social Care, Health and Housing Department relating to health.

Please bring the previously circulated Quarterly Service Report to the meeting.  Copies are available on request and attached to this agenda if viewed online.

The Panel received and noted the sections of the Adult Social Care, Health and Housing Department’s Quarter 4 (January to March 2015) Quarterly Service Report (QSR) relating to health.

The Panel was informed that at the end of Quarter 4 831 people had been helped to stop smoking.  This was an increase on the figures for the previous year and with a successful quit rate of 72% this represented the highest rate in the South East region.

Two hundred people had signed up to the specialist weight management treatment programme in Quarter 4 and a significant number were meeting their weight loss targets.  This number was considered to be exceptional and the service was currently working at capacity.

The Public Health Team had carried out a significant amount of work to increase the take up of health checks and had achieved a delivery rate of 12%.  This was the highest delivery in the South East region and it was expected that as a result of the Government’s payment by results initiative the Council would receive money for the results achieved.

Work had taken place to develop the Falls Prevention programme.  This community based initiative aimed to help residents put measures in place at an early stage so that the likelihood of a fall occurring were minimised. 

To help support the mental health of children and young people an online counselling service was now live.  The service accessible at www.kooth.com  provided free anonymous counselling and support to young people experiencing emotional problems. Resources were also available for parents and teachers. Kooth was also able to take on clients that had been stepped-down from CAHMS services and this would mean that young people would now be able to receive ongoing support. A move that was hoped would reduce the number re-referrals being made to CAHMS.  In order to ascertain whether the service was having an impact a range of quantitative data was being collated and analysed including psycho-social indicators, impacts on other services and displacement activity e.g. the number of referrals and re-referrals made to CAHMS and the size of CAHMS waiting lists.  It was agreed that updates on the Kooth service would be included in future QSRs.

The Panel noted the update.

To consider:

a.    The results of the Care Quality Commission’s 2014/2015 survey of adult inpatients for Frimley Health, the Royal Berkshire and Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals

b.    The current information from the NHS Choices website, for the NHS Foundation Trusts providing most NHS services to Bracknell Forest residents.

The Panel received a report setting out the results of recent inpatient surveys for the three acute hospitals providing services to Bracknell Forest residents, and other relevant information from the NHS Choices website.

The Panel expressed concern that all the surveys indicated that patients were not satisfied with the availability of information about how to make complaints.  The Panel was informed that whilst the information was readily given out on request its availability was not made overt.  Healthwatch Bracknell Forest had raised concerns about this approach with the Hospital Trusts and was working with Frimley Health Trust to incorporate the information into the discharge information routinely provided to patients.  It was agreed that the Panel Chairman would write to the Hospital Trusts to raise the Panel’s concerns about the availability of information about the complaints process with them.

The Panel noted the report. 

To consider scheduled Executive Key and Non-Key decisions relating to health.

The Panel noted the forthcoming Executive Key and Non-Key Decisions relating to Health.

I054365 Child Healthy Lifestyle and Weight Management Service – It was clarified that this decision related to service provision in Slough, Wokingham, West Berkshire and Reading only. As the host authority, Bracknell Forest had responsibility for the decision under the terms of the Shared Public Health Agreement.

The Panel received and noted a report providing an update on scrutiny activity and developments during the period December 2014 to May 2015.

To consider the Panel’s work programme for 2015/16.

The Panel received a report setting out the previously agreed work programme for the Panel for 2015/16. 

It was reported that the Health and Wellbeing Board had recently implemented a multi-agency Task and Finish Group to explore primary care infrastructure in the borough and the Borough’s needs and requirements in the future.

It was acknowledged that responsibility for the commissioning of specialist areas lay with NHS England and that scrutiny of this area would be difficult.

Healthwatch Bracknell Forest would be happy to provide reports on service commissioning as experienced by service users.

It was acknowledged that the recommendations in relation to the development of specialist knowledge areas that came out of the Panel’s recent work on the Francis Report needed to be embedded into the Panel’s work.  It was suggested that future meeting agendas include a standing item to enable members to give updates on developments in their chosen specialist areas.

The Panel noted the suggested work programme for 2015/16 and agreed that further consideration would be given to the areas that working groups might examine outside the meeting.

The next meeting of the Health Overview and Scrutiny Panel is scheduled to take place on 1 October 2015 at 7.30pm.

It was noted that the next scheduled meeting of the Health Overview and Scrutiny panel would take place on 1 October 2015 at 7.30pm.