The new Clinical Commissioning Groups have outstanding leaders, for the most part, and they are beginning to exert their muscle in terms of service redesign and not being bound by the rules of the past.
NHS Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group, a membership organisation of GPs from 95 GP Practices covering 493,000 patients, is establishing a patient centred health service with its “Healthy Liverpool Programme.”
Commissioners in North East Essex are to have “difficult conversations” with patients and providers to enable them to “commission in a different way,” said Dr Shane Gordon (pictured), CEO, North East Essex Clinical Commissioning Group.
Politicians need to have “an honest conversation with the public about the pressures we face, the money we have and how we spend it in the future,” said Mike Farrar (pictured), Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation.
The NHS Alliance has launched a General Practice Network which it says is “the only network in the health sector to support the whole practice team – practice managers, GPs, nurses, and healthcare assistants.”
Diabetes UK is launching an advertising campaign within key NHS settings to mobilise people with diabetes so they will ask for annual checks recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).
School nurses in Wandsworth are beginning to contact local GPs about children at their schools who are classed as very obese, as identified by the National Child Measurement Programme.
The debate over a pharmacy law that forces patients away from GPs who dispense pharmaceuticals is heating up in the House of Lords with a series of questions from five peers to Earl Howe, England’s pharmacy minister.
Fear of dentists and worries about the cost of dental care combine to delay trips to sort out dental problems but regular dental check-ups can help to prevent a series of health problems including heart disease, pneumonia and diabetes, according to the British Dental Association.
NHS Durham Dales, Easington and Sedgefield CCG has introduced a Quality Governance Scheme that will pay its 40 member GP Practices to deliver high quality primary care.
