‘Exciting times’ as reforms tackle key health concerns (From Ilkley Gazette)

‘Exciting times’ as reforms tackle key health concerns

1:00pm Monday 20th August 2012 in Local news

The largest of the district’s three new clinical commissioning groups has held the first meeting in public of its shadow governing body.

The Bradford District’s Clinical Commission Group (CCG) recently met at Douglas Mill, Bowling Old Lane, Bradford, and set out its vision and key priorities for the future.

Bradford District CCG, which serves a patient population of 330,115, is one of three such organisations covering Bradford district, which have been developed as part of the NHS reforms in the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

A profile of health issues the CCG will focus on include smoking and problem alcohol use, increasing levels of mental health problems and high levels of cardio vascular disease and respiratory disease.

Bradford District CCG’s vision is ‘better health for the people of Bradford’, and key priorities include tackling health inequalities; impro-ving patient safety, primary care quality and outcomes for people with long-term conditions, as well as transforming urgent and interm-ediate care plus mental health and community services.

Dr Andy Withers, clinical chair-man of Bradford District’s CCG, said: “This is a very exciting time for us as a CCG, as we’re laying the found-ations for how we want to develop and deliver excellent health services to more than 330,000 people.

“This is a real opportunity for us to put patients at the heart of everything we do and work with them to make sure the NHS meets the diverse needs of all our communities.

“Our first meeting of the shadow governing body, at which one of our patients will share his personal experiences of care, will help set the scene for a new way of commissioning healthcare and creating better health for the people of Bradford.”

The other two CCGs in the district are Bradford City CCG, which serves 118,000 patients, and Airedale, Wharfedale and Craven CCG, which has a patient population of 155,781 and incorporates some practices from North Yorkshire.

Primary care trusts (PCTs) will be abolished from April 2013, and CCGs will take over some of their responsibilities. CCGs are different in that they are made up of their member GP practices, who establish a governing body to oversee the way they carry out their responsibilities.

As a minimum, the governing body includes GPs, a secondary care specialist, a nurse, two lay members, a chief financial officer and the accountable officer.

The CCGs in Bradford, Airedale, Wharfedale and Craven will not be formally established until PCTs are abolished.