Harrow PCT Board, 3 March 2009

Interesting highlights only.

1. Rebranding As from 2 April the PCT is to be known as ‘NHS Harrow’. It is believed this will be more meaningful to the public than ‘Harrow PCT’. On legal documents, however, it will still be ‘Harrow PCT’, as that is the officially registered name.

2. Operating Plan for 2009/10 A huge item, of some 140 pages, but discussion took no longer than 10 minutes. It is the detailed plan covering just about everything the PCT expects to do during the next year, spelled out in excruciating detail.

3. Emergency Planning Annual Report How to cope with emergencies that can be foreseen, such as a potential influenza pandemic..

4. The ‘World Class Commissioning’ Panel Report In spite of the rather fatuous name, this is the report of a panel of NHS experts, aided by some with healthcare experience abroad, on how well Harrow PCT does its work. According to the panel, not as well as the ‘self assessment’ that went alongside. But they recognised that the PCT had a bad period in the past and has come out of that, with a largely new team that shows promise.

5. Transfer of Commissioning Responsibility for Social Care Needs from PCT to Harrow Council This considered the transfer of people with learning disabilities from the PCT (i.e. NHS) to the local Council (i.e. local government financing). The number of people involved is not very large, the sum involved is under £4 M, but the problems involved are very major. Very few other councils have shown any willingness to accept the financial responsibility as this will be in competition with all other local authority funding instead of being safely sheltered within NHS funding. It will be interesting to see how Harrow and NHS Harrow cope with this.

Paul