Agenda and minutes

Venue: Council Chamber - 4th Floor - Civic Centre. View directions

Contact: Martin Stevens  Tel: 01902 550947 or Email: martin.stevens@wolverhampton.gov.uk

Media

Items
No. Item

1.

Apologies and Substitutions

[To receive any apologies for absence and notification of substitutions]. 

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Apologies for absence were received from Panel Members, Cllr Phil Page, Rose Urkovskis and Tina Richardson.  No notification of substitutes had been received. 

 

Cllr Linda Leach sent her apologies as the Portfolio Holder for Adults.

 

Professor David Loughton CBE, Chief Executive of the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust sent his apologies. 

 

Marsh Foster sent her apologies as the Acting Chief Executive of the Black Country Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. 

 

2.

Declarations of Interest

[To receive any declarations of interest]. 

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Chair of the Panel, Cllr Susan Roberts MBE declared a non-pecuniary interest under the digitally enabled Primary Care item, as she lived in an area of Wolverhampton where the Babylon App had been offered as a Primary Care Service option.    

 

Tracy Cresswell declared a non-pecuniary interest under the digitally enabled Primary Care item, as she lived in an area of Wolverhampton where the Babylon App had been offered as a Primary Care Service option.    

3.

Minutes of previous meeting pdf icon PDF 475 KB

[To approve the minutes of the previous meeting as a correct record]. 

 

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The minutes of the Health Scrutiny Panel meeting held on 16 December 2021 were confirmed as a correct record. 

4.

Dementia pdf icon PDF 3 MB

[To receive a report from the Alzheimer’s Society and a presentation from Public Health and Adult Social Care Commissioning on Dementia]. 

 

[The report from the Alzheimer’s Society is marked: To Follow].

Additional documents:

Minutes:

From the Alzheimer’s Society, Mr Harrison Marsh, the Regional Public Affairs Campaigns Officer for the West Midlands, Mr Lee Allen, the Dementia Connect Local Services Manager and Kielan Arblaster, Policy Officer gave a presentation on increasing access to a Dementia diagnosis. 

 

The Regional Public Affairs Campaign Officer stated that the increasing access to a Dementia Diagnosis Project had been launched in September 2021.  This followed on from the Alzheimer Society’s pathway report in 2020 titled ‘From diagnosis to end of life: The lived experience of dementia care and support.  The Covid-19 pandemic had caused the national diagnosis rate for people with Dementia for people aged over 65 to drop by 6.3% in just one year.  The target audience for the Dementia diagnosis project was for CCG areas that had a diagnosis rate below 62.5% as of June 2021.  The diagnosis rate for the Black Country and West Birmingham CCG was 59.3% as of June 2021.  All four Local Authorities in the area were contacted with details of the report.  Wolverhampton to date had been the only Local Authority to invite them to a public meeting to discuss the project in detail.  It was really positive that Wolverhampton Council had invited them, and he was hopeful other Local Authorities would do so in the future. 

 

The Regional Public Affairs Campaign Officer commented that Wolverhampton was at or close to the national target diagnosis rate.  The rate was 66.6% in December for Wolverhampton in comparison to the Black Country rate at 60% and the England figure of 61.8%.  He wanted to encourage Wolverhampton to continue to improve its diagnosis rate with the aim of reaching the 73.4% rate which had been seen in Wolverhampton in July 2019.  He was also keen for Wolverhampton to share any good practice within the wider area of the Black Country and West Birmingham. 

 

The Regional Public Affairs Campaign Officer remarked that 3 reports had been written as part of the project.  There was one on ethnic minority communities, a second on reducing variation of diagnosis rate and a third on hospitals and care homes.  Evidence had been gathered from a wide range of sources. 

 

For ethnic minority communities the community level barriers were listed as follows: -

 

·       Language barriers affecting access to information

·       Stigma and taboo contributing to low levels of awareness of Dementia, which itself leads families to ignore or conceal Dementia.

·       Cultural perceptions – around Dementia, health and caregiving, limit knowledge and awareness of Dementia.

 

Service level barriers for ethnic minority communities were detailed as: -

 

·       Lack of culturally appropriate service provision.

·       Lack of culturally appropriate diagnostic tools.

·       Lack of access to quality, interpretation services.

·       Lack of demographic data to plan services.

The regional variation reasons for diagnosis were described.  The regional barriers were listed as: -

 

·       Deprivation affects prevalence and the identification of symptoms, both for person and clinician.

·       Rurality affects prevalence identifying symptoms and access to services.

 

The systematic barriers to regional variation were described as: -

 

·       People ‘out there’  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

5.

Update on the Merger of Urology Services at, The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust and Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust pdf icon PDF 383 KB

[To receive an update report on the merger of Urology Services at, The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust and Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust]. 

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Strategic Advisor to the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust Board, and the Senior Programme Manager – Strategy presented an updated report on the merger of Urology Services at the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust and Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust. 

 

The Strategic Advisor commented that they were not where they expected to be with the merger.  The Senior Programme Manager – Strategy remarked that they had spoken to the Health Scrutiny Panel in July last year about the merger.  The benefit of the merger would be to increase capacity across the two trusts and to provide a sustainable emergency Urology Service at Walsall.   It was the case that nationally Urology Service waiting times were not good.  The waiting times for Urology Services at Wolverhampton were particularly poor.  It had been hoped that the merger would have been completed by January 2022, but this had not occurred.  The major reason for the delay had been problems with the logistics and planning.  The building works had been slow, with a delay in some of the resources and the supply chain.  They were now working to a revised timetable, but she was not able to give the Panel an absolute completion date.

 

The Senior Programme Manager – Strategy commented that whilst waiting times continued to be poor and further decline marginally, they were working at 100% capacity in the month of February for the first time in two years.  They had engaged with the bladder cancer support group about the merger since they had last attended the Panel.  They were supportive of the merger proposal.

 

The Strategic Advisor to the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust Board added that the planning for the merger had been completely disrupted by Covid and in particular the Omicron variant.  They were hesitant to provide a date because on the construction side of the project, some of the logistics were out of the Trust’s control.  He did not believe the merger would be completed in quarter 1 of next financial year, he would be disappointed if it was not completed by quarter 2.

 

The Healthwatch Manager stated that Healthwatch had been contacted by the bladder cancer group who had not been happy with the engagement that had taken place.  Healthwatch did meet with them and working with the group submitted a number of questions to the Trust.  These were answered and a meeting was held with a Urology surgeon.  Healthwatch now had an agreement with the Trust to sit in outpatients to talk about any concerns the patients had. 

 

A Panel Member stated that they thought it would be helpful to have a more definitive target date for the completion of the merger.  The Strategic Advisor to the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust Board responded that they were working through a revised Project Plan and trying hard to get a clear date from their suppliers and contractors on the building works.  He thought the Trust would be in a position to give a firm date within the next month.

 

A Panel Member  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

6.

Digitally Enabled Primary Care (Report from the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust) pdf icon PDF 754 KB

[To receive a report from, The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust on Digitally Enabled Primary Care]. 

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Deputy COO – Division 3 from the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust gave a presentation on digitally enabled Primary Care.  The presentation had a particular focus on Babylon, who the Trust had launched a partnership with on the 5 October 2021.  The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust covered 9 GP Practices, which were spread across the City and one just over the border in Staffordshire.  The registered population was just over 55,000 patients.  Babylon were a global digital health care company.  They were a large and well regarded organisation.  They were registered with the CQC (Care Quality Commission) and provided good quality care. 

 

The Deputy COO stated that the partnership with Babylon was within Primary Care.  Babylon’s cutting-edge AI powered technology combined with the local medical and clinical expertise to create an all-in-one healthcare digital offer from an electronic device such as a mobile, laptop or tablet.  It was important to note that all patients remained registered with their local practice.  Learning and experience from the partnership would be carried forward to help other organisations, as there was considerable national interest.  There were no up front costs to install the infrastructure for the project.  A multi-disciplinary project group had overseen the work and all information governance requirements had been met through the Partnership agreement.   

 

The Deputy COO said that patients using the Babylon service were seeing RWT staff, such as GPs, Physios and Pharmacists.  They were able to see a schedule of appointments and book in, without the need to call reception.  Appointments were via video or on the telephone.  The service also allowed access to digital self-care tools, this included a symptom checker, Healthcheck and monitor.  The app helped the patient choose the most appropriate clinician to have an appointment. 

 

The Deputy COO commented that one of the benefits of the App was the fact that it was ‘always open.’  It was not like a traditional surgery reception which you had to wait to open.  Patients could also book and reschedule appointments around their needs.  Patients had more choice over who they saw, such as the clinician type, gender or a specifically named person.  Patients could also leave feedback after every appointment which gave them more granular and real time information. 

 

The Deputy COO stated that to date nearly 2000 appointment had been delivered via the appointment system in the app.  82% of these appointments had been with a GP, 13% Pharmacy and 5% Physio. Over 2,500 people had also used the symptom checker.  Patient feedback had been really positive.  95% of ratings had scored 4 or 5 stars out of a maximum score of 5.  They were receiving a 44% response rate, which was favourable compared to the national survey response rate of 34%.  Over 100 comments had been received as part of the feedback.  67 had been positive, 26 suggested an improvement, 6 neutral and 2 negative. 

 

The Deputy COO remarked that the next steps were to explore additional Primary Care capacity by attracting new or more workforce  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.