Agenda item

Report of the Director of Delivery Care out of Hospital, Sheffield CCG.

The Board considered a report of the Director of Delivery Care out of Hospital on the Primary Care Strategy for Sheffield.

A presentation was also provided to the Board which gave an overview of the strategy and what had been achieved; the presentation also outlined the achievements so far and what was hoped for the future.

It was imperative that the strategy for primary care was of a consistent standard and quality was engaging and be accessible to anyone, regardless of their social circumstances and it would offer the same level of service to people with mental ill health and disability as was available to the rest of the population.

Creating better equality in health outcomes for people living in Sheffield would mean improving how people manage their own health and ill health and make sure they had equal access to the support needed, regardless of their social circumstances.

Dr Anthony Gore, Woodseats Medical Centre and Nicky Normington, NHS Sheffield CCG North Locality Manager advised that a lot of work was going on out in the community about embedding resilience into practices and upskilling practice managers. 

Nicky spoke of getting GP’s to work collaboratively to share space and services to ensure that patients received the same services at all practices in the City.  GP’s had worked with children to create a new superhero to combat people not turning up for their GP appointments called ‘DNA Man’.  Chapelgreen GP Practice had worked with Ecclesfield School to create the superhero figurehead for the campaign which was now being rolled out across their neighbouring practices.

The Board were advised that when people do not turn up for GP appointments it costs the NHS money and drives up waiting times for other patients. All practices had problems with people not attending appointments from time to time, so sharing the DNA Man campaign to tackle these challenges together would save money.

Nicky advised the Board that they were working hard to try and pull in the bigger services; however patient input didn’t seem to be there especially in the North of the City.

Greg Fell, Director of Public Health, Sheffield City Council asked how staff would know when the practices were at a point where they were satisfied with the services provided to patients and what were the deal breakers?

In response it was advised that the practices had started pooling resources and the next steps were to input this into the daily working of the GP’s.  A sense of achievement would be felt when the patients accessed the most services and when staff said it felt better and the services provided appeared more joined up.

Alison Knowles, Locality Director, NHS England asked if it was a plan for staff to have the same localities?

In response it was advised that stronger relationships were needed through more work with mental health workers, social workers and health workers and also links needed to be made with the Police.  The work taking place was about improving services, not trying to align boundaries.

Dr Alan Billings, Police and Crime Commissioner commented that the police would welcome more regular discussions with the CCG going forward with regards to more collaborative work between health professionals and the police.  It was advised that the police were trying to get back to more community policing and hopes that links can be made.

The Police had buildings that could be utilised by different services and this could form part of the discussions for collaborative working going forward.

Nicki Doherty, Director of Care-Out of Hospital advised of the Strategic Estate Group, on which it was suggested that the Police be involved in.

Councillor Jackie Drayton commented that the strategy was very adult focussed and this could be a good opportunity going forward to establish links with other services such as Sexual Health Services and Domestic Violence Services.

Councillor Drayton also asked what the strategy could do to ensure people were visiting the doctors.

In response Dr Tim Moorhead advised that practices were raising the same issues and these needed to be addressed closely with the ACP.

Practices were seeing mainly children and the elderly, with a priority to see children on the day.  Addressing patients’ needs in different areas needed to be done sensitively and dealt with by teams.

Councillor Cate McDonald (Co-Chair) summarised the discussion and felt that the strategy was going in the right direction, but there was still a lot of work to do.  Primary Care was central to the transformation of the NHS and inequality needed to be addressed in practice and across the board.

RESOLVED that the board notes the primary care strategy update and presentation.