Health and Wellbeing Boards: Staffordshire

(asked on 1st June 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the two Health and Wellbeing Boards in Staffordshire have created a single executive group to oversee the implementation of the recommendations of the Staffordshire Distressed Health Economy report by KPMG and hold the organisations in the Staffordshire Local Health Economy to account.


This question was answered on 9th June 2015

One of the key functions of the Health and Wellbeing Boards is to promote greater integration and partnership, including joint commissioning, so it is for them to decide how they collaborate to achieve the best outcomes for their population.

The Commissioning Congress has been set up in Staffordshire to bring together both clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and local authority commissioners. The six CCGs have a line of accountability to Health and Wellbeing Boards to deliver the health and wellbeing strategies as part of the transformation programme. The Congress will lead the Transformation Strategy which will drive the service redesign of the Staffordshire Health and Social Care economy to secure financially and clinically sustainable services in the long term. The Congress will engage with local providers in developing these plans to ensure that there is a single five-year plan for the local health economy.

In order to produce a single plan there are a number of steps have to be taken, following on from the work to date by KPMG. These include the consideration of strategic plans, consultations on possible reforms and the implementation of recommendations flowing from this. To release information ahead of these steps could possibly prejudice the outcome. There will be a full public consultation on the resulting plans during the autumn of 2015.

NHS England has identified the Staffordshire CCGs as high risk, and as such is monitoring their performance on a monthly basis with a full quarterly review of finance and performance. NHS England increases the intensity of performance reviews where there are significant shortfalls, and this includes weekly meetings with CCGs where appropriate.

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