Calderdale Councillor chides NHS bosses for speeding ahead with shake-up plan that the Council unanimously rejected last year

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Several members of Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS attended the Health and Wellbeing Board meeting at Halifax Town Hall on Thursday 2nd July.

This Board is a statutory body set up by the Health and Social Care Act 2012, with the intention that the local authority should plan strategically to integrate health and social care services. It has little statutory power.

Rosemary Hedges, Secretary of Calderdale 38 Degrees, reports on Councillors’ challenges to the NHS bosses’ cost-cutting plans for Calderdale hospital and community health care services.

But do these challenges have much substance, given the Board’s lack of statutory powers? These lie with the Adults Health and Social Care Scrutiny Panel. Continue reading →

Monitor boss threatens deficit-ridden NHS hospitals with cuts to services and takeover into hospital chains

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The NHS competition enforcer David Bennett has told NHS Foundation Trusts that if they don’t bring down their deficits, they will lose their freedom to decide their own strategy and the way they run their services. This includes the power to retain their surpluses and borrow to invest in services for patients.

The 152 foundation trusts together face a £1bn deficit this year, but the government has decided this is “unaffordable”.

Austerity punishing poor for mistakes of rich

David Bennett, the Monitor boss, told NHS finance directors they have to bring this deficit down by speeding up productivity improvements and working in new ways.

Continue reading →

Will Calder Ward Forum tell us about impacts on patients of the secretive new Upper Calder Valley NHS Vanguard scheme?

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This evening’s Calder Ward Forum at Hope Baptist Chapel (6.15pm for 6.45pm start) is a chance to ask Councillors for information about how a new model of NHS care that is being set up in the Upper Calder Valley is going to affect patients.

The Upper Calder Valley Multi-speciality Community Provider (MCP) Vanguard scheme is a pilot funded by NHS England that aims to set up a “new model of care”, based at the Todmorden Health Centre.

It will fast-track the so-called Care Closer to Home scheme that is part of the Right Care Right Time Right Place proposal to cut and close acute and A&E hospital services, including acute children’s and complex maternity services.

Care Closer to Home aims to make this possible by taking services for the frail elderly, chronically ill and children out of hospital and putting them into the community, on the unfounded assumption that this will cut acute and A&E hospital admissions. Continue reading →

Calderdale and Kirklees Councillors must solve Care Closer to Home contract mystery at Joint Health Scrutiny Committee on Monday

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Anyone who wants to find out about the sell off of our NHS, and understand how this is going to affect patient care, has their work cut out as the plot thickens around the £238m Huddersfield and North Kirklees contract for Care Closer To Home.

This contract is to take services out of the hospital and integrate them into community health and social care services for chronically ill and frail elderly people, with the aim of cutting acute and A&E hospital admissions and services. This is in order to cut NHS spending. Otherwise a £22bn NHS funding gap is predicted to open up by 2020.

The award of the contract has been at a standstill for a month. Yesterday the Health Service Journal reported that the massive contract has gone to a consortium led by Locala, the community health company that was set up in 2010 with staff and assets transferred from NHS Kirklees Primary Care Trust.

The organisations involved – the Clinical Commissioning Groups and Locala – maintain that the contract is still at a “standstill”.

Despite the confusion, Calderdale and Kirklees Councils’ Joint Health Scrutiny Committee (JHSC), which meets in Huddersfield Town Hall, 10.30 am on Monday 29th June, has no plans to ask Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group what’s going on. Which rather gives the lie to their earlier promise that they would closely scrutinise this contract. Continue reading →

Virgin Care’s Meadowdale GP centres contract to be extended despite unanswered quality and cost questions

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Without ever mentioning the private health care companies by name, a recommendation to extend Calderdale’s Virgin Care and Locala GP contracts without putting them out to tender was agreed pretty much as a formality at the first meeting of Calderdale’s Commissioning Primary Medical Services Committee.

The Virgin Care GP contract was the main topic of discussion, since it runs out this September. The extension will take it up to April 2017.

The possibility of not extending the Virgin Care contract was only mentioned once and then dismissed immediately, on the grounds that this risked causing the company to walk away, and patients would have to find other GPs.

But no one could answer questions about the Virgin Care GP practice’s quality and value for money. Continue reading →

Future of VirginCare’s GP practices contract to be decided at NHS bosses meeting in Halifax today

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This afternoon at 4.15pm Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group’s new Commissioning Primary Medical Services Committee will meet in public at the Elsie Whiteley Innovation Centre on Hopwood Lane, to decide on its terms of reference.

It will then consider a recommendation to extend the Alternative Provider Medical Services (APMS) GP contract with VirginCare, which is shortly to run out.

Richard Branson’s private health care company has run the three Meadowdale GP practices for some years – unbeknown to most patients and members of the public, as I found out a while ago. Continue reading →

Locala health care company wins massive community health contract in Kirklees but NHS commissioners are saying nowt

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The Health Service Journal has reported that Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group and North Kirklees Clinical Commissioning Group have finally announced that they have awarded the £285m/£238m (various accounts of the value) contract for Care Closer to Home community health services to Locala, the company that took over Kirklees’ NHS community health services in 2010, under New Labour’s Transforming Community Services scheme.

The Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs),  Locala and the CHFT hospitals trust are still not saying a thing publicly about the contract award, although NK CCG messaged me,

“We are currently continuing to work through the process and will publicise the details when we are able to do so.”

Continue reading →

All welcome at 25th July Dewsbury workshop on how to defend the NHS against the privatisers’ plans

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Dewsbury Keep Our NHS Public invites everyone to JOIN THEM on Saturday 25th July in sunny Dewsbury, from 11am – 4pm at Dewsbury Women’s Centre, (men are welcome :)), 7 Wellington St. WF13 1LY, where Dr Anna Athow (retired Consultant Surgeon & BMA member) will give a presentation on NHS England’s Five Year Forward Plan – so that we know what we’re dealing with.

There will be lots of opportunities to ask questions and discuss what these proposals mean to the hospitals, community and public health services and GP surgeries in our areas – as well as gaining an understanding of what is happening nationally. Continue reading →

26th June deadline for Kirklees NHS commissioners to reply to Freedom of Info request about award of £238m contract

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A Kirklees resident is waiting for a reply to his Freedom of Information (FOI) request about the award of a £238m contract for “Care Closer to Home”. This 7 year contract is for community health services that include district nurses, health visitors, speech and language therapy, foot care and physiotherapy. The reply is due on Friday 26th June and Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group FOI team says,

“The CCG is mindful of the response deadline and expects to be in a position to respond by no later than 26th June.”

However, a reply doesn’t necessarily include the information that has been requested. So we shall have to wait and see if it does. Continue reading →