Agenda item - Chairs Communications

23.1    The Chair gave the following communications:

I’ve got four things to say today:

Firstly, the Care Quality Commission has recently published an inspection report on Brighton & Sussex University Hospitals Trust. I’m delighted to say that this is a really positive report: the Trust has been given an overall rating of good, with several services, including the care provided by staff rated as excellent. The CQC has also recommended that the Trust be taken out of quality and financial special measures.

This really is an extraordinary turnaround, and I’m sure the committee would like to congratulate everyone at BSUH for this achievement. It shouldn’t be forgotten that this is a system success also – the CCG, other NHS providers and the council’s social care teams have worked effectively together to support the hospital, and I’d like to congratulate them too.

This definitely isn’t the end of the story – there are still lots of areas that BSUH needs to improve on, including outpatients, waiting times, and the performance of key services, including cancer. The HOSC will be monitoring work in these areas as well as keeping an eye on the progression of the 3Ts project which will eventually provide much needed additional capacity for hospital emergency services.

Secondly, we’ve also recently heard that Adam Doyle has had his role as Accountable Officer for CCGs across Sussex made permanent. There is a letter from the CCGs giving more details on this appointment at the back of today’s HOSC papers. I’m sure the committee would like to congratulate Adam and wish him all the best in this challenging role.

Thirdly, following the last HOSC meeting I wrote to the Chair of BH CCG asking for more information about the Clinically Effective Commissioning programme. My letter and Dr Supple’s response are included for information at the end of today’s papers. We discussed the CCG response at the pre-meet for HOSC and members it was agreed that it was probably possible for the CCG to pull together a bit more information about what the procedures in the first tranches of CEC are, what the impact of the changes is and so on. When we receive this additional information it will be circulated to members and included in the papers for the next HOSC meeting.

Finally, there’s been some speculation in the local media about the future of the walk-in GP service currently being provided near Brighton Station. We’ve received some information from the CCG on this which has been circulated to members and will be included in the minute to this meeting. We can discuss this fully at the March HOSC, or people can ask questions now.

23.2    Cllr Morris noted that people using the walk-in centre frequently didn’t fill-in the forms as they should, so the utility of the service may be under-reported.

23.3    Fran McCabe wondered what the future would be for sexual health services currently provided from the walk-in centre.