Issue - meetings

Julia Ross, Director of Civic Engagement, West Kent Primary Care Trust will be in attendance for this item.

(Mr S Phoenix, Chief Executive of West Kent PCT was in attendance for this item)

(1)       Mr Phoenix informed the Committee that the PCTs in Kent were working towards a consultation document being available by July for the whole of Kent and Medway.  This would incorporate the feedback and responses from local “co-design” meetings.  The consultation document would deal with forecasting the future financial position across Kent and Medway up to 2015–6.  Fit for the Future had been initially predicated on the assumption that there would be a severe financial crisis if nothing happened, but this was no longer the case. The emphasis would now be on the need for more care to be provided in the community.  This was about the type, levels and settings of care in the community.  He said that it would not be possible to have a once-and-for-all consultation, as things were changing all the time.  For instance, he expected very soon to have revised guidelines on stroke-handling.  The new standards would require every hospital to do things differently.  There would be a network model and not every hospital would do everything.  Fit for the Future was unlikely to propose major infrastructure changes.    Mr Phoenix offered to come to the July meeting of the NHS Overview and Scrutiny Committee for a preliminary conversation about Fit for the Future.

(2)       The Chairman asked whether there would be a common approach to Fit for the Future across the whole of Kent and Medway.  Mr Phoenix responded that there would be a single document, localised to particular areas.  Mr Horne referred to a 16,000-signature petition relating to the Tonbridge Community Hospital, as well as to similar campaigning in other areas. He asked Mr Phoenix whether Fit for the Future would cover the future of the Community Hospitals.  Regarding the renal unit, he asked how this would be paid for.  Mr Phoenix responded that Fit for the Future would reflect proposals on the future of the Community Hospitals that would be in a separate report, which was going before the West Kent PCT Board on 24 May 2007.  He said that it would have something exciting and positive to say.  With respect to the renal unit, he said that the PCT was already paying Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Trust, as a specialist provider, for the use of this service. The question was only one of how the service was to be provided in future.

(3)       Asked a question about the capital implications of providing care closer to home, Mr Phoenix said that there would be some capital implications but not many.  He said that, with the new hospital at Pembury, the county would have the most up-to-date hospital stock in the country.  Pembury Hospital would be very new; Darent Valley Hospital was new; Gravesham Community Hospital was new; and Maidstone Hospital was relatively new in NHS terms – and parts of it were very new.

(4)       RESOLVED that:-

            the position be noted.