Agenda item

A presentation will be given by be given by - Fran Riches, Deputy Head of Transformation and Martha Cox, Engagement Lead for Virgincare. There will then be an opportunity to ask questions.

A presentation was given by Martha Cox and Fran Riches from Virgincare and Tamsin May from CCG B&NES. This presentation looked at the vision for the population of B&NES and introduced the B&NES Citizens’ panel concept. A copy of the presentation is included with these minutes and available online.

Questions

1.  Councillor Rob Appleyard – What impact on patients have the issues in your IT systems had on patients?  And what resilience do you have if one of your centres goes down?

Response – There has been an implementation programme where PC’s have been replaced and a new IT desktop package has been introduced. This has seen some impact on Virgincare staff but not had an effect on Patients. We have learnt from the incidents that have taken place and we always put patient care first, our systems are heavily tested and data integration testing is carried out.

2.  Councillor Dine Romero – Are the IT issues an unexpected complication? And was the new virtual solution what was proposed in your tender document?

Response – The issues were not expected and an investigation is taking place into why this happened. The solution we have implemented was in the tender.

3.  Councillor Dine Romero – Will the citizens panel give patients what they need or could they end up being a ‘knee-jerk’ reactive group?

Response – The panel will be comprehensive, we have seventy contractors/groups that have been asked to input, and existing relationships will be used along with a broader diverse set which represent people with disabilities and ethnic groups. This will be a wide panel that will be broken down to cover tailored areas.

4.  Councillor Joe Rayment – What assurance can you give on there being no further IT failures?

Response – An internal incident has been raised which is being strongly scrutinised by four executive directors as part of the governance structure that we maintain. There is a reporting schedule we will be following that links into our programme board.

5.  Councillor Joe Rayment – The Virgin contract is set to run over a seven year period, what reassurance can you provide that the quality of services won’t decline in the later years?

Response – We are clear that we will have a constant standard of delivery. The steps we are taking to save money through ways of working and better technology will provide this.

6.  Councillor Peter Turner – How will you be monitoring how GP surgeries are organising themselves?

Response – The GP’s are all separate businesses we will be looking to work alongside the practices to integrate but this can be challenging.

7.  Councillor Lin Patterson – What will be the maximum number of people that will be on the citizen’s panel? and how often will these meet?

Response – There is no set upper limit to members on the panel, there will be varying regularity for different topics that are covered by a number of groups. Some groups may never hold meetings and others could have regular get-togethers, we will look at IT solutions for online feedback where suitable to do so.

8.  Virginia Williamson – How does Virgin fit in with the Health and Wellbeing Board and Select committee? and what will be the criteria that you will be setting out on your performance indicators?

Response – The Health and Well-being Board is attended by different organisations and all have an input, these meetings are publicly webcast.  There are over 1,400 performance indicators which Virgincare report on, next year we hope to have a version which reports to the public what they need to know. 

9.  Michael Hill – Who are the customer for reporting from Virgincare?

Response – B&NES Council and the CCG are the customer who Virgincare is reporting to, KPI’s will be made available.

Councillor Dine Romero asked what the forum is being asked to do with the information that has been shared at this meeting.

Cllr Paul Myers explained that information that comes to this forum is for the local people and representatives present to consider and share with the community. This is not a scrutiny panel, this forum should be looking to be asking issues questions about the impact in Bath and looking to follow up with any further issue that they would like to see addressed on the topic.