June meeting of the Community Voice

Our June meeting will be at 7.45pm on Thursday 4th June in the

Post Graduate Centre Mount Vernon Hospital.

Our guest speaker will be Barbara Gill, Project Director Mount Vernon Cancer Services Development Project, speaking on “Making progress on cancer services” – the way ahead for the Mount Vernon Cancer Centre

Visitors are welcome as guests

A whirlwind of change in community health services!

Maria O’Brien was guest speaker at the Community Voice May meeting.

She covered so much ground that we felt a whirlwind had hit us! Her enthusiasm and dedication to patient services was transparent and exciting. Summarising is an impossible task.

Traditionally PCTs have commissioned services – which means planning and purchasing – and they have also provided community health services. NHS national policy now obliges PCTs to separate theses two roles. The former PCT provider services are now called Hillingdon Community Health which, from 1st April 2009, has been designated as an autonomous provider by NHS London. Maria O’Brien is its Managing Director.

However, Hillingdon Community Health is still responsible to the PCT Board although it is now an independent organisation with its own £30.5 million budget from Hillingdon PCT. It employs 550 staff to provide 32 different health services in patients’ homes and 19 clinics.

Its Adult Services include district and specialist nursing, podiatry, specialist dentistry, community matrons, various therapies, infection control, wheelchairs, rapid response teams, safeguarding adults service. It is responsible for two GP practices in the south of Hillingdon and also for the 22 bed in-patient facility at Mount Vernon in the Northwood and Pinner Community Unit.

Its Children’s & Young People Services include health visiting, child development, community paediatricians and nursing, various therapies, school nursing, safeguarding children, looking after children and also family planning and sexual health.

Various options are open to this new organisation. It could remain as it is or become a Community Foundation Trust. It could integrate with an acute NHS Trust or a Foundation Trust, or the Local Authority. It could become a Social Enterprise, outside the NHS, or merge with another PCT Provider. It could even become a private enterprise.

In 2009-10 it aims to focus on expanding and improving clinical services for local users, but it will also consult with staff, patients and the public, the local authority, hospital, and GPs before making recommendations about its future framework in Autumn 2009.

Within the next two months it hopes to achieve a wait of no more than two weeks for physiotherapy. It also plans to develop a “home” intravenous antibiotic service, expansion of the Rapid Response Service, a new wound care service, more community matrons to support patients with long term conditions and expansion of other services including diabetes, rehabilitation, immunisation and children’s services.

Hillingdon PCT has been very supportive, more so than many PCTs, with investment in community services and an extra 110 front-line posts in Hillingdon.
Questions came thick and fast. All were answered. It was a highly informative and interesting experience for the audience.

Many thanks to Maria O’Brien!

Joan

North West London Hospitals, April 2009

Principal items only. Altogether a very satisfactory report of what has been happening.

1. CEO report A variety of interesting items reported here. The trust has received full registration by the (new) Care Quality Commission (CQC), which came into being on 1 April. Like many other hospitals NWLH has a shortage of midwives. In London there are 400 vacancies for midwives but there are only 200 being trained. Trouble ahead!

2. Annual Performance This was very good in many areas. The A&E target of 98% patients being treated within 4 hours was reached, for the whole year, in spite of an increase in the number of patients being treated. The MRSA target of 28 cases was met – ‘target’ is the wrong word, it’s actually a permitted maximum. Regarding C.Diff there was a 40% improvement over the last year’s figures. The ‘18 week’ target of 90% (for referral of a patient for tests, diagnosis and treatment) was met comfortably, with 98% and this earned an efficiency bonus of £700K.

3. Swine flu The Trust is well prepared, one of the ‘London referrals’ had been to NPH. Staff in infection units are being advised to have vaccinations. Alert precautions will remain in force for a long (unspecified) time.

4. Cervical screening There is a 14 day target for screening. Numbers have recently increased greatly, referred to as the ‘Jade Goody’ effect.

5. Mid-Staffordshire check list Trusts have been asked to compare their performance against the recent report of multiple failures at the Mid-Staffordshire Trust. Our trust has a clean bill of health in this comparison.

6. Finance With some heroic work on non-recurrent items, the trust finished the financial year with a positive balance of about £170K. An adverse balance is expected for next year.

Paul

What's new in April in Hillingdon Hospital?

Resignation of the Chairman

The Chairman, Tony Valentine, has announced his resignation, effective on the 1st July.

Accident and Emergency Department activity

Demand has recently escalated with an extra 35 to 40 patients per day in A&E, mostly between 8pm and midnight. So Hillingdon Hospital failed to meet the national target of treating all A&E patients within four hours of arrival. In April its rate dropped to 96.4%, bottom for London and in the lowest quartile nationally. So, the Trust has been summoned to discuss its action plan with NHS London. Additional staff are being introduced on evening shifts.

Finance
2008-09 was very challenging, with the combined pressures of achieving the 18 week target, very high energy and utility price rises, and a large increase in agency staff use. Never-the-less, the Trust delivered its best performance on national and local targets and ended the year with efficiency savings of £4.7m. The highest earning departments were Obstetrics and Trauma / Orthopaedics, followed by Accident & Emergency.

Flu Pandemic
In a recent audit of preparations for a possible ‘flu pandemic the hospital scored an assessment of 98%. This was a national audit, in which the London average was a score of 82%, so The Hillingdon Hospital was considered well prepared

MRSA Screening
It is hoped that all elective patients will be screened for MRSA by the end of April or early May. All inpatients after two weeks are now re-screened every 14 days to assist in the identification of high-risk patients.

Pressure ulcers
A successful pressure ulcer awareness week was launched in March to raise awareness among both staff and the public.

Joan Davis