Agenda item

12:45

The Chairman’s report is attached at JHO9. It includes answers to Committee members’ questions regarding Musculoskeletal Services (MSK) and an update on Banbury Health Centre.

LUNCH 13:30

Prior to discussion of this item the Committee was addressed by Anita Higham OBE, Chair of the North Oxfordshire Locality Forum, on the subject of Physiotherapy as part of Musculoskeletal Services. She also spoke on behalf of the North East, City, West Oxfordshire, South West and South East Locality Forums.

She stated that across Oxfordshire, all six Locality Forum Chairs were receiving concerns expressed by many patients who were experiencing a significant and serious breakdown in the provision by Healthshare for their physiotherapy and muscoskeletal needs.  Healthshare was contracted to provide services for GPs in primary care and patient self-referrals.

She pointed out the view that although there were examples of good services, these were overtaken by serious administrative and organisational difficulties which had led to enormous frustration. Patients had experienced extensive discomfort and further pain due to a lack of treatment long after they had been referred.

OCCG had previously had quite separate contracts with the OUH and OH to the usual physiotherapy for MSK or neurological issues following in-patient procedures.

She asserted that Healthshare had inherited a very considerable backlog of untreated patients from the previous contract holders for GPs and self- referrals and had made seemingly very little improvement in managing this. Locations for patient appointments were also not within acceptable travelling distances from their homes.

The locality forums believed that this was a problem of inadequately challenged and poorly monitored performance against contract by the OCCG. They requested the Committee to seek answers to these matters by requesting an update from the OCCG on publicly-funded Healthshare’s progress against their contractual requirements. 

The Chairman proposed, and the Committee AGREED the establishment of a Task & Finish Group to look at questions of the performance of MSK services, to include the expressions of concern received by the Committee in respect of the above.

Cllr Jenny Hannaby, local member for Wantage, expressed her concern that the physiotherapy department had ceased to operate from Wantage Hospital. Instead people were being allocated to premises in Faringdon, to which there were no bus services. She had recently been informed that people could also go to Witney and Wallingford community hospitals to access these services. She stated that only the maternity facility remained at Wantage and was concerned for the Hospital’s future. The Chairman noted these comments and referred them to the Task & Finish Group for further examination.

Cllr McHugh reported that he had received correspondence from a number of GPs regarding MSK services stating that now the administration had improved, letters of referral had been received by patients. He added however that the time - period for referrals for scans was unacceptable and that the referral form itself were too complex. These issues were also referred to the Task & Finish Group.

The Committee AGREED the following recommendations (made as part of agenda item JHO7);

(a)  develop working principles that could be signed up to by this Committee and Health colleagues

(b)  amend the change process to introduce a staged approach with different threshholds of change (ie, minor/temporary/significant;

(c)   introduce more flexible ways of working to allow for early engagement, dialogue, feedback, evaluation (for examples, briefings, task and finish groups, reference groups, debriefs, visits, annual planning event and training;

(d)  robust feedback and communications (for example, to ensure HOSC feedback is recorded and communicated); and

(e)  set an evaluation and reporting back framework.

In addition to the actions referred to above, the Committee AGREED to note the Chairman’s report.