Agenda item

Progress of the Integrated Care Partnership in Harrow

Presentation from the National Healthcare Service (NHS)/ Local Authority.

Minutes:

Members received a progress update from the Acting Borough Lead Director for Harrow, NWL CCG on progress of Integrated Care Partnerships (ICP), who provided a high-level overview on the background and development of ICPs, raising the following key points:

 

·                 ICP was a collection of organisations which were coming together and were at the heart of the NHS long term health and care system change plan but were relatively undefined and varied significantly nationwide. ICP sat at a borough level and played an important role in serving the local population and bringing together local partnerships.

 

·                 Set up originally as a “100-day” programme of joint working across Harrow by the Harrow Health and Care Executive, ICP had become the central vehicle for coordinating Harrow’s Covid-19 pandemic response.

 

·                 Strong agreement across partnership that Health and Care Executive has been central in improving joint working across organisations over last 12 months.

 

·                 The aim of ICP was to integrate design, planning and delivery of health services and bring real change by moving towards a shared leadership, governance, financial understanding and common values.

 

·                 ICP was working on multiple joint priority areas, addressing issues such as frailty and care settings, mental health, learning difficulties, inequalities and digital transformation amongst many.  A series of ICP conversations would be taking place throughout the months of June and July 2021 in order to review progress to date and build a plan for the future.

 

The Committee thanked offices for their presentation and asked a series of questions which were responded to as follows:

 

·                 From March 2022, the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) would be dissolved as a statutory body and would be replaced with a single NW London CCG, with borough directors overseeing each area.

 

·                 No changes were expected to the main GPs funding as this was based on a national contract with a clearly set cost per patient.  However, ICP would retain responsibility for managing specific budgets delegated to each borough team such as primary care and joint commissioning funding.

 

·                 Importance of making sure that patient voices in Harrow were heard at a NW London level was noted.

 

·                 The move from transactional to a more collaborative interactions between organisations and growing focus on meeting the needs of local populations was noted and confidence was expressed that the ICP foundations being set now would represent and serve Harrow well into the future.

 

·                 The limited number of face to face appointments at GPs practices was a known issue, which was largely due to the fact that many practices were still working work under operational procedures aimed at preventing Covid-19 transmission and protecting workforce, thus requiring GPs to apply a triage model when determining which cases required face to face consultation and restrict the number of people visiting the surgery.  Increased demand, particularly in urgent care treatments, and significant backlog of pre-existing cases meant that a balanced and flexible approach to managing appointments, making the most of the existing digital offer and resources was needed.  Representatives also acknowledged there were common misconceptions about what the return to “normal” looked like and that better communication was needed in managing patients’ expectations.

 

RESOLVED:  That the update be noted.

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