Staff “better prepared” at poorly attended Hanson Lane drop in on the future of Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS

Two members of the public – Anna Best and Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS member Dr Chris Day – report here on the 9th June Hanson Lane drop in session about the future of Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS.

Anna said that the representatives at the Hanson Lane drop-in event gave out leaflets and information, listened to her concerns and wrote down a number of her questions and suggestions. She thought they may have better prepared than those at previous drop ins, judging on previous reports. Continue reading

Integrated health and social care in the community is a vehicle for NHS privatisation

NHS England recently announced that it is “looking very actively” at how it can make Clinical Commissioning Groups get involved in commissioning primary care.

From September 2014, NHS England will hand over a role in commissioning primary care to Clinical Commissioning Groups. This handover is related to setting up a new system of integrated primary and community health and social care – just like the new system that the Calderdale and Greater Huddersfield Strategic Outline Case plans to set up.

It doesn’t seem to bother NHS England that this would create a clear conflict of interest for Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), which are groups of local GPs; or that the GPs’ trade union, the British Medical Association, had just a week earlier said it opposed CCGs commissioning or decommissioning GP contracts because of conflict of interest. Continue reading