Agenda item

(1)       The Chairman welcomed Glenn Douglas (Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust) and Michael Ridgwell (NHS England – Kent and Medway) who gave a presentation on Delivering the Five Year Forward View.  A copy of the presentation is available on line as an appendix to these minutes. 

(2)       It was confirmed that the 1% of budget that CCGs were required to keep as a surplus was not available for their use and was often used to support providers’ deficits.

(3)       In response to questions, Mr Douglas said there were variations in the development of plans across Strategic and Transformation Plan (STP) areas but there was an expectation that by the end of June all plans would be sufficiently developed to enable them to be assessed.  The development of the STP in Kent and Medway was not significantly behind the development of plans elsewhere and a meeting with NHS England would take place in July to agree an implementation plan.  The plans were currently in a draft stage.

(4)       Mr Douglas said the STP would set out the vision for health and social care provision, options for delivery and a plan for delivering the vision.  He also said the direction of travel set out in the STPs submitted by the end of June would be an important, but not the only, factor in the determination of the financial allocation over the next five years.

(5)       Mr Douglas also said: it was important to develop a system-wide understanding of the implications of commissioning intentions; the East Kent Strategy Board had begun to do this in East Kent and a similar exercise was required for West Kent.

(6)       Mr Ridgwell said that the STP was a five-year strategy that would lead to plans with clear targets and milestones.

(7)       The emphasis in the STP on preventing people being admitted to hospital was welcomed and the need to move away from relying on small scale public health services (relating to smoking cessation, health weight and alcohol use) to deliver large scale impacts was recognised.

(8)       Comments were also made about the importance of challenging assumptions and understanding individual organisations’ objectives as well as identifying 3-5 key actions to deliver sustainable health and social care services across Kent.

(9)       The desirability of replicating the Vanguard model elsewhere in Kent was acknowledged as was the role of the Kent Integration Pioneer. 

(10)     The Integration Pioneer had been renamed the Kent and Medway Integration Pioneers and as well as being a working group of both the Kent and Medway HWBs it was suggested that it could become a  working group of the Kent and Medway five- year forward view group.  In addition, the Design and Learning Centre for Clinical and Social Innovation had been launched to make out of hospital care safer with an initial focus on developing a prototype of an Integrated Community Healthcare Centre which, if rolled out across Kent, could radically reduce the need for acute care beds and ensure a shift of investment from the acute sector to the community as well as attracting innovation funding.

(11)     Resolved that the presentation be noted.