New NHS Herts gets to grips with merger of old PCTs – May 2010

Written by Joan Davis

Thursday, 27 May 2010 20:03

New brooms …

Forging the old PCTs into one new unit is bound to take time. The various parts of the new organisation are busy setting up ground rules and establishing starting points.

Money …

Finances are currently causing headaches throughout the NHS. This new PCT inherits pressures arising from its old components, such as expenditure deferred from last year and similar problems totalling £10.4m, the need to find £13 million to offset money that last year came from non-recurrent sources, and a £19m gap between funding available and the cost of contracts agreed by its predecessors for hospital services. Financial concerns will be a recurrent theme in the year ahead.

Stroke Services …

The new Herts PCT is working with West Herts Hospitals Trust to consolidate TIAs (Transient Ischaemic Attacks – otherwise known as mini-strokes) at Watford Hospital, to ensure consistent and rapid access to diagnosis and treatments in TIA clinics.

Care Quality Commission National Outpatient Survey 2009

This was the third national outpatient survey. Sadly, both West Herts Hospitals NHS Trust and East & North Herts Hospital NHS Trust were rated in the 20% poorest performing Trusts in England. Themes emerging from this survey include:

· Poor cleanliness, including bathrooms and toilets

· Poor communication during consultations

· Patients feeling uninvolved, resulting in lack of confidence in medical staff

· Patients feeling that they had insufficient privacy during treatment or examination

Both Trusts have provided NHS Herts. with improvement plans, which it will closely monitor

National GP Patient Survey

Quarter 3 survey results were published in March 2010. The survey asks 50 questions about patients’ experience. West Herts ranked 6 out of 14 in East of England for both overall access score and satisfaction with care, and ranked 5^th for satisfaction – substantially better than East & North Herts. However, across the combined areas, between 10 and 20 practices are consistently performing badly and they have been identified as needing help to improve.

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