NHS Services

Why is the LINk is referring the NHS Wandsworth decision on the Battersea polyclinic hub to the Council’s Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee? 

 Wandsworth LINk has now sent Wandsworth Council its reasons for referring the recent NHS Wandsworth decision to create a split-site polyclinic hub for Battersea, to its health Overview and Scrutiny Committee for further analysis. 

Wandsworth LINk considers the new plan to be a substantial change from the previous one and should therefore be exposed to public consultation.  The split-site service will inconvenience patients, sometimes requiring attendances at both sites to deal with a single problem.  The availability of capital finance is being given as the recent for the change of plan.  There was a solution for this in 2008.  Is that solution not available today?  For the full reasons for referral please see attached note.  The Committee will be held in public at Wandsworth Town Hall at 7.30 pm on Tuesday 16th February.

Why are Wandsworth LINk referring the NHS Wandsworth Polyclinic decision to the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee

Keep your child safe from swine flu this winter

All children over six months and under five years of age in Wandsworth are now being offered the swine flu vaccine.  The under fives are most at risk from swine flu and more likely to need hospital care than any other age group.

GPs across Wandsworth are offering the vaccine and parents of eligible children will be contacted directly by their GP.

Local GP Tom Coffey said: “Even if your child is healthy, it’s extremely important to get them vaccinated again swine flu.  Children can easily catch and pass on the swine flu virus and unfortunately we’ve seen higher rates of hospitalisation in the under fives.”

“It’s impossible to know if you’re child has already had swine flu unless they’ve had a positive laboratory test for the virus.  Our advice to parents is therefore, don’t take a chance, the swine flu vaccination will keep your child safe this winter.”

The under fives are the latest group to be offered the swine flu vaccine.  The vaccine is already being offered to

• Adults and children between six months and 65 years of age in the current seasonal flu vaccine clinical ‘at risk’ groups. e.g. who have a long-term health condition, including chronic lung disease and heart disease;
• Pregnant women;
• People who live in the same house as someone whose immune system is compromised by disease or treatment, and
• People aged 65 and over in the current seasonal flu vaccine clinical “at risk” groups.

For more information on swine flu, visit  www.nhs.uk or call the Swine Flu Information Line on 0800 1 513 513.

At its meeting on Monday evening, the Council’s Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee discussed a report on “Information for Choice” in the NHS. This report identified the various sources of information available to local residents who want to find out more about the quality of different local healthcare services in order to help them make a sensible choice about where they should go fro treatment. In an appendix to the report, Wandsworth LINk provided comments about some of the gaps in the information provided by NHS Wandsworth and the NHS Choices website about local services. These gaps were generally due to missing or misleading information. NHS Wandsworth, in its reply to the report, noted the issues and stated that most of the problems would be overcome when their new website was launched later this year.

To read LINk’s comments click here Informed Choice

Over the Christmas and New Year period the Wandsworth immunisation team are running drop-in clinics for women aged 13 to 18 years old to catch up with their HPV jab. This vaccine will protect them against their future risk of cervical cancer.

Nurse Betty, lead immunisation nurse says “While you are out Christmas shopping or catching up with friends, why not pop into one of our drop-in clinics and protect yourself against cervical cancer for years to come.”

If you want to find out more call the Wandsworth immunisation helpline on 020 8254 8393 or email betty.attipoe@wpct.nhs.uk or wpct.imms@nhs.net
Clinic times and places:

St Christopher’s Clinic, Battersea
Wheeler Court
Plough Road
SW11 2AX

TUESDAYS 12noon to 4pm
WEDNESDAYS 9.30am to 12.30pm
Doddington Clinic, Battersea
311 Battersea Park Road
Battersea
SW11 4LU

MONDAYS 1.30 to 4.30pm
THURSDAYS 1.30 to 4.30pm
Tooting Bec Medical Centre
103 Macmillan Way
Tooting
SW17 6AT
(off Franciscan Road opposite Tooting Bec Common)

SATURDAYS 9am to 12pm

At it’s recent Board Meeting NHS Wandsworth selected St George’s Hospital Trust as its preferred organisation to take on the Wandsworth Community Services as it separates from the Primary Care Trust.

The PCT also received a detailed report of the events leading up to the voluntary liquidation of Secure Healthcare, the social enterprise providing healthcare services to inmates of Wandsworth Prison.  In discussing the report, it was recognised that it was difficult to balance the financial risk of accepting a tender from an untried organisation, against the improvement in services such an organisation might achieve.

To read the full report click below:

Notes from the Wandsworth PCT Board, 2nd December

The health of people living in Wandsworth has been recognised as good in an independent review of local public services published on 9th October.

Oneplace, known formally as the Comprehensive Area Assessment , brings together the work of the Audit Commission, Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission and Her Majesty’s Inspectorates of Constabulary, Probation and Prisons to assess how well local partners such as the NHS, council, police, fire and rescue services are working together to tackle local priorities in Wandsworth.

The assessment shows that Wandsworth is performing significantly better than the England average in some key areas, including reducing smoking in pregnancy and encouraging adults to eat healthily and be physically active. Wandsworth also compares well for new mothers breast feeding their babies, reducing adult obesity and rates of diabetes.

Amanda Philpott, Deputy Chief Executive, NHS Wandsworth said

“It is extremely important for us that we work in association with a range of organisations including the local council, social services, and community and voluntary groups when finding solutions for better healthcare in the borough. We are very pleased with the outcome of the CAA but remain focused on pushing standards in local healthcare by improving access, quality and choice of health care services, particularly for those people in Wandsworth’s most deprived communities.”

“We are delighted that Oneplace recognises the success we’ve achieved together with our local partners in the borough to promote good health in Wandsworth and in particular to address health inequalities.

“Oneplace is a welcome addition to existing healthcare assessments as it brings together information from different sectors to look at the joint goal of improving quality of life for our local people.

Do you agree with this report? What could NHS Wandsworth do to improve local residents health even more?

You are invited to a free event: Revolutionising public involvement in healthcare where on 30th November, Patient Opinion is launching its mental health platform and they would like you to be involved. They are inviting you to attend a free full day Mental Health conference where they hope to be joined by a mix of LINks organisation members and service users, so please extend this invite to those who may have an interest in attending.

Booking

To book your place at the event, please call 0114 281 6256 or email Lee.Alexander@patientopinion.org.uk
For further information on this event, please visit the website.
When:
30 Nov 2009 – 09:30am
Where:
The Resource Centre
356 Holloway Road, N7 6PA
London

For more information about Patient Opinion see our own site – who they are and what they do, check them out on the LINks website

NHS Wandsworth Changes Plans

Although NHS Wandsworth have consulted on polyclinic developments across the borough, it is likely that several of the new polyclinic hubs which were planned to bring a wide range of services together on a single local site will not now be developed. Of greatest concern are the changes to the plans for north Wandsworth and Battersea. The key hub for this area was going to be a new comprehensive primary care centre in Grant Road which would have provided primary healthcare and an urgent care centre with a wide range of diagnostic equipment on site.

Use of existing and other planned facilities

The new centre is not now likely to be built, with local residents having to rely on facilities contained within St John’s Therapy Centre and the new primary care centre to be opened next year under the railway arches at Clapham Junction.

Will the new services offer what is needed?

The key question is whether there will now be the complete range of healthcare services provided on a single site near Clapham Junction to offer a real alternative to local A&E services for residents needing urgent care. The review of polyclinic developments across the whole Borough will be reported to the PCT Board at the beginning of December 2009.

What is the Wandsworth LINk doing about this?

Wandsworth LINk representatives, as part of their campaign to seek improvements to local health and social care services, will be trying to ensure that NHS Wandsworth comes up with a plan for urgent care services in north Wandsworth and Battersea which will match the facilities available to residents of other parts of the Borough at hospitals such as Queen Mary’s Roehampton and St George’s.

If you have comments on this development, please use the comment box.

The theme of working together for improved services crops up more than once in this the latest report from the PEC committee meeting with the management team of NHS Wandsworth. This is personal feedback from our PECMAN Andrew Craig in his role as the Lay Member on the PEC (Professional Executive Committee).

Better Integration = More Effective Commissioning

The discussion on how best to provide the services needed by drug and alcohol users identified the important point that ‘drug and alcohol services should be considered together for commissioning purposes in close liaison with the local authority.’ Andrew added his own view saying:

“I welcomed the emphasis on better integration and more effective commissioning of these services. The Local Strategic Partnership should be the forum to address the wider non-health issues around drug and alcohol problems as it could involve more stakeholders including the police and courts service. Insight from service users was an essential part of the intelligence the PCT must obtain in order to improve its competencies in this area.”

The benefits of the PCT and Wandsworth Council working together came up again in a discussion about children’s service and how a joint initiative could be established using pooled funds from both local government and health care organisations.

Unprecedented Response – reliable basis for decisions

The South Wandsworth Consultation in which we as a LINk were very much involved had seen an unprecedented level of response from a good cross section of people in the borough.  This means that the information is a reliable basis for future decisions about the service.

In the light of this successful consultation, it is a shame that work going on to decide where future savings could be made did not involve frequent service users. Andrew makes the point that the PCT’s

“customer insight was inadequate to the scale of the decisions we needed to take and this had to be addressed through our engagement efforts. Service users and the general public had to be brought on board with the rationale for this thinking. If they were not, the risk was considerable that reasonable intiatives to achieve efficiency would be misunderstood and rejected by the very people who should be helping to identify them.”

Better Data, Lower Score but Better Service

NHS Wandsworth had collected better information on its drug services which showed things to be worse than had been previously thought and meant they got a lower score on some of the Government’s targets. However the better data means better provision since managers now have a better understanding of what the needs are and how they might be met. Congratulations to the NHS Wandsworth for risking the consequences of getting low marks on central government targets in favour of better local service in the long run.

To view the PEC October 2009 Report document in full, please visit our Health & Social Care page.

The Care Quality Commission is the independent regulator of health and social care in England. They have just released performance ratings, also known as ‘annual health checks’, for all NHS Trusts in England. The Commission rates each organisation as excellent, good, fair or weak – on both its overall quality and financial management. Each trust’s overall quality score is based on its performance against core standards, existing commitments, and national priorities. The assessment is based on the trusts’ performance between 1 April 2008 and 31 March 2009.

• Wandsworth Primary Care Trust scored FAIR on Quality of Services and GOOD on Quality of Financial Management. (Wandsworth Primary Care Trust Report PDF, 168Kb)
• South West London and St Georges Mental Health Trust scored WEAK on Quality of Service and Good for Quality of Financial Management. (South West London and St George\’s Mental Health Trust Report PDF, 156Kb)
• St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust scored FAIR for both Quality or Service and Financial Management. (South West London and St George\’s Mental Health Trust Report PDF, 160Kb))

Click here to find out more about the assessments and the services local to you.