Agenda item

The Board received an update from Dr Andrew Davies, following the public consultation and NHS Clinical commissioning Group’s (CCG’s) Governing Board decision on the Merseyside review of the Cheshire and Merseyside Procedures of Lower Clinical Priority.

By way of a reminder, in September 2017 the Board was informed of the Merseyside wide review of the existing Procedures of Lower Clinical Priority and the process being undertaken for the stakeholder and public engagement.  The consultation lasted 12 weeks and was undertaken in Autumn 2017, with feedback being collated in November.  Following this the policy development steering group reviewed the consultation feedback and made any final amendments where it was appropriate.  The final set of policies were prepared and presented to each of the CCG’s governing bodies in January 2018 (except Knowsley CCG when it was March).  Following this all CCG Governing bodies approved the review and the proposed policies and had adopted them from the beginning of April 2018.

The following documents were appended to the report:

·       Collaborative Policy Development Project: Governing Body paper seeking sign off of all policies reviewed to date, ahead of implementation with providers;

·       Appendix 1 – Rationale for decisions tracker – suites 1 and 2 policies December 2017;

·       Appendix 2 – Comparison document demonstrating the proposed changes for PLCP Policy 2018-19 against the current PLCP Commissioning Policy 2014-15 – December 2017;

·       Policy Development Project Working Group Meeting 12 – Minutes 14 November 2017;

·       Collaborative Policy Development Project: Governing Body paper seeking sign off of all policies reviewed to date, ahead of implementation with providers;

·       Procedures of Lower Clinical Priorities – Reviewing Local Health Policies – supporting evidence; and

·       Criteria Based Clinical Treatments.

It was commented that it was important to note that the existing policies had been in place for many years so the review was to bring them up to date with new procedures etc, and to bring consistency amongst them all.

The Chair suggested that a summary / table of changes would be helpful to the Board.  Also the comments regarding the availability of mental health services for children under 16 years old and difficulties with funding requests being followed up were noted by Dr Davies.  He advised that a follow up report could be submitted to the Board.

RESOLVED:  That the Board

1)    notes that NHS Halton CCG’s Governing Body approved the review of the revisions to the policies in January 2018, following a presentation of the policy review to Halton’s Health PPB which became operational on 18 April 2018; and

2)    notes that the policies have adopted the current relevant national guidelines for care and comply with the general equity duties set within the national regulations.