outpatient services to be fragmented across private clinics

Bulk of hospital outpatient services to be fragmented across private clinics...

Lancashire County Councils 'Health scrutiny committee' have agreed as an accurate record a report in the previous minutes about the 'integrated care system' (ICS) proposed for Lancashire (and south of Cumbria). The ICS system consists of a mean-spirited 'up front loaded' budget that will be 'demand managed' by a plethora of private/public bodies with little accountability to the public.

The ICS was established in an attempt to curtail the demands placed on hospitals and the NHS budget after the introduction of 'GP-led clinical buying and selling groups' (clinical commissioning groups or CCGs for short).

The minutes from the 5th Feb 2019 meeting say "The proposals to change the [hospital] services provided aimed to improve public health and wellbeing and therefore reduce the demand on hospitals".

Those pushing the ICS however do not reveal just 'how' the closure of hospital outpatient services would result in improvements to the health and wellbeing of the public.

This does mean though a large bulk of hospital outpatients services, those in demand by the private sector, will be closed and shipped out of hospitals into private-public run clinics cited in CCG literature as 'Multi-specialty Community Provider' (MCP) clinics.

Currently, the hospital services are provided by Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS foundation Trust who recently declared a substantial deficit along with its hospitals in Chorley and Preston being found 'requiring improvement' overall for the second year running by the Care Quality Commission.

NHS campaigners fear that due to its large deficits the hospital trust may agree to any scheme CCGs propose, including selling off NHS hospital land, buildings, and NHS service contracts.

The proposal to close many hospital services tallies with an earlier report from a task group named the system design team setup by the local CCGs to analyse feedback from public events regarding proposed radical changes to local GP, hospital, and socially provided and means-tested services...

In Feb-2017 the system design group proposed moving 80% of patients currently seen in an acute [hospital] setting will not be seen there in future. source: Solution Design Event 5 Feedback Document. Exercise 1: Modelling Assumptions with Locality and Hospital Care group validation

Subsequently, in a news article out yesterday about long hospital waiting lists the Lancashire Teaching Hospital NHS 'foundation' trust say they are looking at sourcing 'alternative providers' in an attempt to reduce the backlog of 'NHS' patients waiting for elective operations.