Agenda and minutes

To elect a Deputy Chairman for the Joint Committee.

Councillor Wallace Redford was elected Deputy Chairman of the Committee for the duration of the Municipal year 2018/19.

Apologies were received from Councillors Sean Gaul and Adil Sadygov.

There were no declarations of interest submitted.

To approve the minutes of the meetings held on 19 December 2018 and 25 February 2019 (HHOSC4a and b) and to receive information arising from them.

The Minutes of the meetings held on 19 December 2018 and 25 February 2019 were approved and signed as a correct record (HHOSC4).

There were no matters arising.

The Chairman had agreed a request to address the Committee in relation to Agenda Item 6 from Charlotte Bird, representing ‘Keep the Horton General’ campaign.

14.20

The CCG and OUHFT to report back to the Horton HOSC on the progress with the following:

·                Engagement update (Ally Green, Head of Communications)

·                Work on other small units (Sarah Breton, Head of Maternity Commissioning)

·                Finance overview (Catherine Mountford, Director of Governance)

·                Proposed approach to option appraisal (Catherine Mountford, Director of Governance)

·                Current obstetric staffing (Veronica Miller, Clinical Lead for Maternity)

·                Appropriate authorisations and competencies for obstetric trainees (Veronica Miller, Clinical Lead for Maternity)

Prior to consideration of this item the Committee was addressed by Charlotte Bird, from ‘Keep the Horton General’ campaign group (KTHG) who was speaking on behalf of Sophie Hammond also of KTHG.

She informed the Committee that investigations carried out by KTHG had found that, despite the information given to this Committee* that hospitals could no longer be registered as a training centre for obstetricians if they had less than 3,500 births per year, this information was false. To date the Group had found other hospitals with births amounting to this figure who were operating with obstetricians. She informed the Committee that KTHG would be offering a paper to the Committee’s next meeting, which would include data on this. It would also be offering viable options for a viable and sustainable unit at the Horton.

* At the meeting on 4 July this was corrected to reflect that the information referred to had been given not to this Committee but to a separate meeting at St Marys.

The Chairman welcomed the following Health representatives to the Committee:

-       Dr Bruno Holthof, Chief Executive, Oxford University Hospitals Foundation Trust (OUH) attending on behalf of Louise Patten, Chief Executive Officer, Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (OCCG);

-       Veronica Miller, Clinical Director, Maternity, OUH

-       Kathy Hall, Director of Strategy, OUH

-       Catherine Mountford, Director of Governance, OCCG

-       Ally Green – Head of Communications, OCCG

-       Kate Barker, Deputy Director, Strategy & Planning, Northamptonshire CCG (NCCG)

Survey

Catherine Mountford introduced the report HHOSC6 stating that, in relation to engagement, the largest area to update the Committee on was the survey, which was currently live and open. Ally Green highlighted the following:

-       to date 958 women had been surveyed and 450 partners had also completed the section which invited them to give their views;

-       Pragma who had been appointed to run the survey were very pleased with this response to date and hoped to reach a thousand respondees in what was a very lengthy survey;

-       Three focus groups for women to discuss their experiences had been planned, the first of which had taken place that morning in Wantage and there would be two in Banbury.  There had been plans to run a focus group for partners only, but there had been insufficient interest. Instead partners would be involved via a slightly different way which would still be a means of gathering in depth information on their perspective;

-       The second event was taking place in June. Information on these events were available on the front page of the OCCG website in date order to encourage use and to raise awareness.

The Chairman asked if there was any information on how many of the people who had responded to the survey lived within the Horton catchment area and how many lived outside of it. Ally Green responded that Pragma was looking at the geographical spread against the baseline and was satisfied that there was a reasonable spread across the geographical area. A member  ...  view the full minutes text for item 12/19