Presenting our Commissioning Intentions!

21^st September 2015- 2^nd October 2015

Apologies for the lack of blog posts lately- I’m doing two weeks in one as I’ve been extremely busy and not had the chance to write up what I’ve been up to!

I am making progress with the Ophthalmology contracts; two are near completion! The contract manager Sally and I are are meeting with one of the providers next week so that we can ensure we have everything ready for the commencement of the contract and to go through the final documents that we need.

This week I have also compiled a report based on a multitude of data about the Trust’s performance on a range of areas such as Pneumonia, Heart Failure, Diabetes and COPD. It is an informative and visual report with graphs to send to the Trust in order for them to clearly see their current performance in these areas and their peer group position amongst other similar CCGs.

Last Friday I attended my first Health Voice meeting. HealthVoice is an independent, voluntary body that advises our CCG on the planning and buying of health services, helping ensure that the needs of patients, carers and the public are taken fully into account when decisions are made. It was an interesting and productive meeting with the patients sharing their opinions about the latest updates at the CCG. I have also been assisting the Communications and Engagement Team with a few tasks regarding Health Voice such as the Health Voice Pharmacy Letter Campaign. This is a campaign aiming to get more members of the public involved with HealthVoice. As the degree I am studying for at university is Business and Marketing, it is great to see how the CCG promotes itself and HealthVoice to the public.

Another project I am involved in is assisting Jacki Wilkes, the Associate Director of Commissioning, in developing our commissioning intentions for 2016/17.I have been collating all the proposed initial intentions from key members of staff at the CCG and we have met with patients to inform them of the process and listen to their thoughts. 

I then presented this at the Locality Meeting in Macclesfield. As mentioned in previous blogs, this is a meeting between around 50 GPs and Practice Managers in Eastern Cheshire and a few key members of the CCG in order to give updates on work streams. I presented our commissioning intentions process for 2016/17 at the meeting, explaining where we are currently up to and asked for everyone's thoughts on potential commissioning intentions based upon any gaps in their local area, any key areas for development in a hospital and a community setting and the benefit of the intention. We've received some great responses and I will be collating them next week in time for the next step of the process; to prioritise and shortlist the intentions!

In addition to this I have been learning about Terms Of References in meetings as I have had to create the Terms Of References for a new meeting to replace/merge the Finance & Activity meeting and the Service Quality Review meeting. It was useful to learn about the formality of meetings and the rules involved.