Herts Valleys Clinical Commissioning Grou

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HertsValleys Clinical Commissioning Group (HVCCG)

What is Herts Valleys Clinical Commissioning Group (HVCCG)?

Clinical commissioning groups will become responsible for commissioning (purchasing) most health services on behalf of local people when primary care trusts are abolished in April 2013. HVCCG comprises 70GP practices in Dacorum, Hertsmere, St Albans and Harpenden, Watford and ThreeRivers and commission health services on behalf of almost 600,000 patients and carers registered at these practices.

Our budget for 2012/13 is £634 million and we will spend this on:

Hospital health services
Emergency care including the ambulance service
Community health services – district nursing, health visitors, therapists
Mental health services
Continuing healthcare
GP prescribing

From 1 April 2013, responsibility for commissioning primary care – services provided by GPs, dentists, community pharmacists and optometrists - will sit with the NHS Commissioning Board (NHS CB). The NHS CB will also be responsible for commissioning specialist services and prison healthcare – amongst others.

The health of our local population

The health of our local population is generally better than the England average and deprivation is lower than average, however, more than 16,000 children live in poverty. While our life expectancy for both men and women is higher than the England average it is nearly 8 years lower for men and 5.9 years lower for women in the most deprived areas.

Our mortality rates have fallen and early death rates from cancer, heart disease and stroke are better than the England average.

We have some specific challenges around alcohol consumption, smoking and obesity:

14.9% of Year 6 children are classified as obese
Around 20% of adults smoke
19.6% of adults are obese
There were 6559 hospital stays for alcohol related harm in 2009/10 and there are about 700 deaths from smoking each year

Priorities

As well as a number of public health priorities that are in alignment with those of Hertfordshire’s Health and Wellbeing Board our priorities are:

Preventing people from dying prematurely

Enhancing quality of life for people with long term conditions
Helping people to recover from episodes of ill health or following injury
Ensuring that people have a positive experience of care
Treating and caring for people in a safe environment and protecting them from avoidable harm
Ensuring people have access to appropriate unplanned health services

Aims

Our aims are:

To strengthen clinical involvement in decision making for health within west Hertfordshire.
To ensure safe, affordable and effective services are provided when and where they are needed most
To ensure equity and fairness in our commissioning outcomes
To encourage consistent two-way communication with local people, GPs and others to listen to their needs and views on west Hertfordshire’s health services
To provide patients and the public with the information they need to take more control over their health and health services
To make best use of evidence based practice to help us to make objective decisions concerning healthcare and health services

Our Board

Our Board is made up of local GPs, a nurse, a secondary care clinician, patient representatives along with executive and non executive directors. They are:

Dr Nicolas SmallChair, Hertsmere GP

Dr Alastair VincentHertsmere GP

Dr Trevor FernandesDeputy GP Chair, Dacorum GP

Dr Keith HodgeDacorum GP

Dr Clair MoringWatford and Three Rivers GP

Dr Rami EliadWatford and Three Rivers GPs

Dr Phil GriffinSt Albans and Harpenden GP

Dr Richard PileSt Albans and Harpenden GP

Dr Robert GhoshSecondary Care Doctor

Jan NormanBoard Nurse

James CramptonPatient representative

Joan ManningLINk/HealthWatch representative

Nicola BellInterim Chief Accountable Officer

Alan WarrenChief Finance Officer

Paul SmithNon executive director

Our commitment to patient and public involvement

We now have more than one thousand people who have said they want to find out more or who want to get involved in commissioning local health services. Just over 800 people have signed up to receive our newsletters; another 60 have joined our reader panel (people who read and comment on publications and who participate in user testing of our website) and another 150 who have expressed an interest in getting involved in a specific service such as diabetes or cancer.

We have patient and LINk/HealthWatch representatives on our Board and have embarked on a rolling programme of conversation events to focus on local issues and to identify ways where commissioners and patients, carers, the public and local organisations can work together to improve and enhance local health services to meet the needs of our population.

HertsValleys Clinical Commissioning Group

c/o Charter House

Parkway

WelwynGarden City

AL8 6JL

January 2013