Agenda item

The regular report from the Director of Public Health on matters of relevance and interest.

The Director of Public Health reported on four main topics:

1                    NHS Health Checks – This is a national initiative that is being piloted in 12 wards in Oxfordshire before being rolled out to the whole of the County. Checks take place of blood pressure, weight, height etc. The tests were offered to 2,300 people and were taken up by 924. The plan will be to offer the check-ups to 190,00 people aged between 40 and 74 over a five year period at a cost of around about £45 per person.

2                    Family Intervention Project – A collaboration between the County, City and Cherwell Councils, the PCT, colleges and the police to reduce the number of times people have to provide information. 80 families have been worked with so far saving £80,000 per family over a period of years.

3                    Prevention Profile 2010 – Members were provided with a fact sheet providing information on nationally mandated preventative health services and interventions. There were five areas where Oxfordshire showed up as being “significantly worse than the England average”. The Director suggested that HOSC members might wish to consider two of these, Chlamydia screening and access to a genitourinary medicine (GUM) clinic, as items for scrutiny later in the year.

4                    PCT update on organisational change –

·        Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Health cluster – the joint Chief Executive is to be appointed on March 23^rd followed by the Director of Finance and then an new executive board.

·        The GP commissioning consortium for Oxfordshire (excluding Thame and Shrivenham) now exists and a leader will be appointed shortly.

·        Public Health will be coming across to the County Council in 2013.

·        Other PCT employees will “gravitate” to the cluster or to the consortium.

In answer to questions the following emerged:

1. NHS Health Checks were initially targeted at hard to reach groups in disadvantaged areas in Oxford and Banbury. They could be differently targeted in future, possibly at specific sections of the community. Negotiations on whether or not GPs will be remunerated for running the checks are ongoing.
2. Thame is not included in the Oxfordshire PCT consortium as it is part of the Buckinghamshire PCT area. This is a historical configuration brought about some years ago because GPs in and around Thame look towards Stoke Mandeville and Wycombe hospitals rather than Oxford. The consortium will continue to organise within present health boundaries rather the County boundary.
3. The £80,000 saving from the Family Intervention Project is a notional figure that will only be able to be made subject to review once the project has been working for a while.
4. The Prevention Profile provides information relating to the whole of Oxfordshire. The DoPH undertook to provide figures relating the District and City Council areas.
5. The formal structure of consortia and health and wellbeing boards have not yet been decided. It will be important to ensure that local people are involved in some way and that effective scrutiny takes place. Precise governance processes and levels of independence from the centre have yet to be made clear.
6. Governance procedures for the clusters will be decided centrally.