Agenda and minutes

Apologies were received from Councillor Sean Gaul, Councillor Kieron Mallon, Councillor Alison Rooke and Councillor Adil Sadygov.

The Chairman, Councillor Arash Fatemian, declared a personal interest in Agenda item 5 on account of his former employment with Pragma.

To approve the minutes of the last meetings held on 26 November 2018 and 19 December 2018  (HHOSC3) and to receive information arising from them.

The Minutes of the last two meetings held on 26 November 2018 and 19 December 2018 were before the Committee for approval and signature.

It was AGREED that the Minutes for 19 December 2018 be carried over to the next meeting on 11 April 2019 for approval, in order that the maximum number of Committee members could be present to agree them.

The Minutes of the meeting held on 26 November 2018 were approved and signed as a correct record. There were no matters arising.

The following request to speak at Agenda Item 5 had been agreed from

Councillor Andrew McHugh – as Cabinet Member for Health and Wellbeing, Cherwell District Council

He re-stated the wish of Cherwell District Council (CDC) to see obstetrics re-established at the Horton Hospital and offered CDC as a strategic partner to work with the Trust and/or the CCG to help ensure that this was achieved.

Councillor McHugh welcomed the Trust’s decision to embark on a recruitment programme in South Asia. He had become aware, from a reliable source, that there were a number of highly trained, highly motivated and highly suitable candidates in both nursing and medical roles. He understood that the campaign in South Asia had been focusing almost exclusively on recruiting nursing and midwifery staff. If this was the case, he felt that this might call into question the seriousness of the Trust in trying to recruit doctors for obstetric posts at the Horton. He suggested that the Committee re-visit the commitment of the Trust in relation to this.

He stated that he had attended a stakeholder engagement event, organised by the CCG, concerning options for the Hospital. He felt it was well organised, and was pleased to see that the CCG had taken on board the points raised by Councillor Hudspeth at the 19 December meeting of this Committee. He had suggested that there could be a re-drafting of the catchment areas for the future obstetric service. Councillor McHugh pointed out that the CCG report before the Committee today included CCG projections for additional births based on predicted housing growth. These predictions predicted between 800 and 1600 additional births per year by the year 2031 in an expanded Horton catchment area. He wished to emphasise to the Committee that these projections were based on current District Council projections and did not factor in any additional growth that was likely to come with the Oxford-Cambridge arc. He added that what he thought the projections showed was that it would be possible to establish two mutually supportive obstetric services – one at the Horton and one at the John Radcliffe, sharing the 8.5k (approximate) births per year.

Another point raised at the stakeholder engagement meeting was that the John Radcliffe had spare capacity. He refuted this, pointing out he had understood from reliable sources that the system was under stress, the system that, in order to deal with pressures of demand, had had to close the midwife-led unit at the Horton, in order to redeploy midwives to the John Radcliffe. It was his view that two obstetric units would be able to mutually support each other to balance out the peaks and troughs in demand in the two locations.

He informed the meeting that the purpose of the stakeholder day was to review the criteria by which the various options for obstetrics in Oxfordshire would be compared. There were 14 separate criteria covering domains of quality of care, access, affordability and value for money, workforce and ease of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4/19

10:45

Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (OCCG) and the Oxford University Hospitals Foundation Trust (OUH) will report back to the Committee on progress with regard to the following (HHOSC5): (TWO REPORTS TO FOLLOW)

·         Travel and transport

·         Clinical model

·         Housing growth and population

·         Update on engagement work – stakeholder event and survey

The Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (OCCG) and the Oxford University Hospitals Foundation Trust (OUH) were present to report on progress with regard to the following workstreams:

·         Travel and Transport

·         Clinical Model

·         Housing Growth and Population

·         Engagement Work – Stakeholder events and Survey

The Chairman welcomed the following representatives to the meeting:

-       Louise Patten, Chief Executive, OCCG

-       Catherine Mountford, Director of Governance, OCCG

-       Ally Green, Head of Communications, OCCG

-       Veronica Miller, Clinical Director, Maternity, OUHFT

-       Kathy Hall, Director of Strategy, OUHFT

-       Meghana Pandit, Medical Director, OUHFT

-       Sarah Breton, Head of Maternity Commissioning, OCCG

-       Anna Hargrave, South Warwickshire CCG

Louise Patten introduced this item stating that the primary concern of this update was that of the visionary work taking place by Cherwell District Council and the ongoing work of the revised Oxfordshire Health & Wellbeing Board (HWB). The CCG had established a Stakeholder Group which aimed to look at potential need, and what needed to be put in place. Over time, this would be looked at from a local perspective. She reported that the first Stakeholder Group event, which had very recently taken place on 22 February 2019, had been well attended and had been presided over by a neutral Chair. There was a good mix of representatives across the table, including people from Warwickshire and Northamptonshire. It had proved to be a good opportunity to give information, and to discuss the weighting of the criteria, which had previously been shared with this Committee. She undertook to provide more information on the discussions which had taken place, at the next meeting of this Committee.

Ally Green took the Committee through the first part of the report (HHOSC5) which concentrated on the engagement regime (agenda pages 27-30), the two main areas of work being the survey and focus groups and two stakeholder events. The survey, which was due to be launched immediately following this meeting, was to aid understanding of the experiences of women who had used the maternity services since the temporary closure of the obstetric service at the Horton. The stakeholder group was holding two events with the aim of engaging wider stakeholders in the work of the programme. Both events would be facilitated by an independent, external professional who would also write up the reports on each.

Ally Green reported orally on the first event to which some elected members had attended. The second event was planned to take place in June 2019. The purpose of the first event was to consider information, including evidence and data relevant to the criteria, most of which was included within the papers for this Committee. Participants were asked to focus on considering the criteria to be used for addressing options and deciding on a weighting to be applied. The scores from this would be collated and used to finalise the scores for each option. The aim of the second event was to consider the outcomes of the option appraisal.

She further reported that the survey had  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5/19

11:55

The report (HHOSC6) gives an update on the activity of the Committee between meetings.

The Chairman’s report was received.