Issue - meetings

The Board welcomed Lucy Gardner, from Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHSFT, who gave an update on the integration between Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHSFT and Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHSFT.

Members were advised that significant opportunities were identified to improve both patient services and staff experiences working at the front line, and were launching a programme of work to deliver integrated and collaborative models of care between both Trusts.

An overview of each organisation was presented with the programme of workstreams and a summary of progress to date was outlined.  This included priority services such as urgent and emergency care, intermediate care, dermatology and paediatric audiology, and the rationale for their prioritisation.   The next steps to be taken with the integration plan were also explained.

Lucy responded to Members questions as follows:

·       Stakeholder and public engagement was crucial to be able to understand the opinions / needs / experiences of people and the aim was to use the responses to help make improvements;

·       The services at Urgent Care Centres (UCC) were being looked at and may not offer exactly the same services they do presently.  The aim was to ensure that each one was able to meet the needs of both Towns and their communities;

·       The numbers of staff across the Trusts would not be increased, but the functions of the existing staff would be shared better, more efficiently;

·       The NHS usually has a high turnover rate of staff, so compulsory redundancies as a result of the integration were not planned;

·       The intention of the integration programme was to deliver financial savings to support the sustainability of healthcare provision; and

·       The name of the integrated service was not yet decided, the current branding was ‘ Better Care Together’ but the final branding was to be agreed.

RESOLVED:  That the update is noted.