SEVERN URGENT AND EMERGENCY CARE NETWORK
STEERING GROUP –
Terms of Reference
1. Background
NHS England has requested that Urgent and Emergency Care Networks (UECNs) be created across the country, recently deciding the footprints should match those of the local Trauma Networks. Locally, this means aligning to the North Bristol Trauma Network, which covers Bristol, North Somerset, Somerset, South Gloucestershire, BaNES, Wiltshire, Swindon and Gloucestershire – forming a new ‘Severn’ UECN.
Gloucestershire CCG is the lead/coordinating commissioner for the new Severn UECN, led by the Deputy Accountable Officer Mark Walkingshaw. This has been agreed by the CCG leads.
2. Purpose
The intention is that UECNs will provide strategic oversight of UEC on a regional footprint, ensuring that patients with more serious or life threatening emergencies receive treatment in centres with the right facilities and expertise, whilst also assuring that individuals can have their urgent care needs met locally by services as close to home as possible.
The UECNs are expected to develop a regional response to the recent national UEC review with constituent SRGs being responsible for delivery. UECNs will aim to improve the consistency and quality of UEC by addressing the challenges that single SRGs find difficulty tackling in isolation. SRGs will look to UECNs to provide support where there is an advantage in uniformity of the provision of a standard of care.
3. Deliverables
Severn UECN is expected to deliver the following:
· Improve the consistency and quality of UEC by addressing the challenges that single SRGs will find difficult to tackle in isolation.
· Meaningful clinical and patient and public involvement;
· Creating shared objectives across the Network footprint, including:
o Creating and agreeing an overarching, medium to long term plan to deliver the objectives of the national Urgent and Emergency Care Review;
o Designating urgent care facilities within the network, setting and monitoring standards, and defining consistent pathways of care (across both physical and mental health) and equitable access to diagnostics and services for both physical and mental health;
o Making arrangements to ensure effective patient flow through the whole urgent care system (including access to specialist facilities and repatriation to local hospitals);
o Maintaining oversight and enabling benchmarking of outcomes across the whole urgent care system, including primary, community, social, mental health and hospital services, the interfaces between these services and at network boundaries;
o Achieving resilience and efficiency in the urgent care system through coordination, consistency and economies of scale (for example, agreeing common pathways and services across SRG boundaries);
o Coordinating workforce and training needs: establishing adequate workforce provision and sharing of resources across the network;
o Ensuring the building of trust and collaboration throughout the network; spreading good and best practice and demonstrating positive impact and value, with a focus on relationships rather than structures.
4. Work Programme
The Network was ‘launched’ at an event for key partners on 11 September 2015. At this event, the top three priorities for the Severn UECN were agreed as:
· Undertaking an UEC stocktake;
· Developing a combined clinical hub across 999/111/OOHs services; and
· Improving the Directory of Services (including ensuring systems are in place to show real-time activity).
5. Overall Approach
Severn UECN
The Severn UECN is a group of organisations that are working together across the eight CCG areas towards a series of common goals, through an agreed work programme. It consists of:
· A list of members (i.e. key representatives of local organisations) – known as the ‘Severn UECN Membership’;
· A Steering Group; and
· A series of Working Groups.
All the above will be supported by a small management team, hosted by the lead organisation – Gloucestershire CCG. This whole ‘picture’ is described diagrammatically in section 6 below: Network Governance.
UECN Membership
The foundation of the approach is the concept of the Network being centred around its membership. The members are representatives of local organisations who are key UEC partners.
The members will not meet ‘in person’ on a regular basis due to the high number of people, as key stakeholders there will regular communication with the whole membership. The membership may meet quarterly as required.
Steering Group
The Steering Group will act on behalf of the Severn UECN Membership to deliver an agreed work programme (initial areas having been agreed at the 11 September ‘launch event’).
There is a reporting relationship between the SRGs, the CCG Governing Bodies and the provider Boards, which could flow either way depending on local arrangements in each health community.
The Steering Group attendee lists consists of individual people attending on behalf of their sector, instead of their organisation (for example, one community services attending to represent all community providers).
The pragmatic approach taken to selecting proposed attendees has been based on organisational size (i.e. those organisations covering the widest geographical area) and/or based on ensuring the widest geographical spread (i.e. the need to ensure all eight CCG areas are well represented).
Working Groups
A Working Group will be appointed to lead each work programme workstream, and each will report into the Steering Group. Each Group will either be a newly formed ‘task and finish’ group, or an existing forum will be used where possible. The Steering Group will agree the right approach on a workstream-by-workstream basis. Each Working Group will be expected to consider the list of Severn UECN membership when determining who to directly involve and/or engage with.
Management Team
A small management team will meet regularly to support the Steering Group in its work delivering the Severn UECN work programme. The team will consist of managers from the lead CCG (Gloucestershire), the South West Strategic Clinical Network, and Ross Hamilton as the Severn UECN Manager, working alongside Professor Jonathan Benger as Severn UECN co-chair.
6. Network Governance
7. Steering Group Membership
Network role / NAME / TITLE / ORGANISATIONCo-Chair, Joint Clinical Lead / Professor Jonathan Benger / National Clinical Director for Urgent Care, NHS England, and Consultant in Emergency Medicine, University Hospitals Bristol
Co-Chair / Mark Walkingshaw / Director of Commissioning / Gloucestershire CCG
Member / Felicity Taylor-Drewe / Associate Director of Contracts and Urgent Car / Gloucestershire CCG
Network Manager / Ross Hamilton / Programme Manager / SCW CSU
Network Support / Lauren Peachey / Personal Assistant to Mark Walkingshaw / Gloucestershire CCG
Senate Member / Sunita Berry / Associate Director / South West Strategic Clinical Network and Senate
Acute representative / Kate Hannam/Simon Sethi / Chief Operating Officer/Director of Urgent Care Operations
/ North Bristol Trust/Yeovil District Hospital
Clinical Lead GP / To be appointed / To be appointed / To be appointed
SRG lead - BNSSG / Judith Brown / Director of Operations / Bristol CCG
SRG Lead – Glos / Mark Walkingshaw / Director of Commissioning / Gloucestershire CCG
SRG Lead – Swindon / Gill May / Executive Nurse / Swindon CCG
SRG (STG)Lead – Somerset / David Slack / Managing Director / Somerset CCG
SRG Lead – Wiltshire / Deborah Fielding / Chief Officer / Wiltshire CCG
SRG Lead - BaNES / Tracey Cox / Chief Officer / BaNES CCG
Community Lead / Tbc / Wiltshire Community Services (Geographical spread) / Wiltshire Community Services
Health and Wellbeing Board / Mark Pietroni / Director of Public Health South Gloucestershire (Chair of Directors of Public Health Group) / South Gloucestershire Council
Ambulance Lead / Paul Birkett-Wendes / Head of Operations (North) (Only provider) / South West Ambulance Service
Mental Health Lead / James Eldred / Clinical Director (Largest provider across Network) / Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership
Local Authority / Sue Wald / Head of Commissioning, Swindon Local Authority (Geographical spr
ad) / Swindon Local Authority
Public and patient Representative / Christine Teller / Chair / NHS Citizens Assembly
Health Education England / Clare Hines / Head of Strategy and Corporate Affairs / Health Education England
Community Pharmacy / Tbc / Avon Community Pharmacy (Largest) / Avon Community Pharmacy
111 Lead / Sue Brookes / Service Director (Largest Provider across Network) / Care UK
Out of Hours Lead / Helen England / Director of Service Delivery (Largest Provider across Network) / BrisDoc
Co-opted Members: Workstream lead managers/clinicians will be invited to attend as relevant.
8 Meeting Frequency and Duration
The Steering Group will meet for 2-3 hours, every 2 months (frequency to be kept under regular review).
9 Meetings Management
Agendas will be sent no more than three working days before each meeting and minutes sent out no more than five working days following each meeting.
10 Reporting Arrangements
See governance framework in section 6 above.
In order for the Network to realise the potential of its scope, it will need to be enabled to deliver change. The Network will align and co-ordinate with the outputs of local statutory organisations, and not take any authority away from them. It will have the authority to make decisions in relation to the deliverables defined in section 3 above through the seniority of staff attending.
11 Quoracy
Meetings shall be considered quorate with the following representation:
· UECN Chair
· UECN Programme Manager
· 2 SRG Chairs and/or CCG representatives
· 1 acute trust representative
· 1 ambulance trust representative
· 1 community trust representative
· 1 Mental Health representative
· 1 NHS 111 service provider
· 1 NHSE representative
· 1 OOH representative
· 1 Local Authority representative
12 Review
These terms of reference will be reviewed at least six monthly.
RH 29/09/15
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