14th January meeting to receive a report on problems at York A&E
Following our story this morning prospective York MP Nick Love wrote to the new (Conservative) Chair of the Council’s Health Scrutiny Board suggesting that an urgent item be added to the agenda.
He wanted the meeting to hear first hand about the problems, the causes and the potential remedies.
Credit where it is due, Cllr Paul Doughty acted promptly and has given an assurance that a hospital representative will attend the meeting.
The meeting takes place on Wednesday, 14th January, 2015 starting at 5.30 pm. The venue is the George Hudson Board Room – 1st Floor West Offices (F045). It is open to the public and residents can register to speak.
Nick, in his Email to Cllr Doughty, said,
“Given the ongoing and very public crisis covered extensively in the media regarding A&E at York Hospital, would you please consider putting the matter on the Agenda for the forthcoming Health Scrutiny Committee on 14th January.
I believe the public interest would be well served by an update on the current situation, including current figures on the “care in community” places available to York Hospital – a lack of which may be exacerbating the problems at York Hospital. As you know – spare beds to enable admissions are created when patients are discharged and care in community places significantly help towards this situation – of which the City of York Council bears partial responsibility.
It would help if we could know if the City of York Council is meeting its obligations and targets in this respect – so as to be of the most help possible to York Hospital in this time of unprecedented pressure on their services, including A&E.
Hopefully you could also ensure that a representative from the hospital attends the meeting (I’m sure they would welcome the opportunity) and that they publish a factsheet indicating relative demand levels, comparing this and previous years, together with a root cause analysis of the reasons for the A&E targets not being met.”
A century of film in York
York Council set to ignore problems in York hospital A&E department?
Residents and patients, expecting an update on problems at the York Hospital A&E department, will be disappointed when they read the agenda for the Heath Scrutiny committee taking place on 14th January.
With the York hospital performing worse than others in the region in meeting A&E targets recently, residents might have expected the committee – which now has responsibility for providing oversight of NHS issues in the City – to have received an update on the latest position.
It seems that this will not be the case.
This is all the more surprising as among the causes identified nationally for the A&E problems are lack of beds.
In turn this is blamed on lack of care in the community places for patients to move to when they can be released from hospital. The York Council bears part of the responsibility for providing such care places.
One report does reveal that the Council is still overspending its Adult Social Care budgets by over £1 million. In the main this is put down to delays in implementing the new care homes project. The Lowfields Care village – as has been reported on many occasions – is running 3 years behind schedule.
The report says, “the performance for delayed transfers of care from hospital is showing a small increase in line with the national trend”
Another report comments on the financial position of the York hospital revealing a surplus of £100,000 in 2013/14 (down on the budget expectation which was £2.4 million).
The hospitals total budget is around £480 million. The hospital is, however, required to make efficiency savings as revealed in its strategic plan.
Another part of the NHS the Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group delivered a £2.12 million surplus last year.
Hopefully the chair of this scrutiny committee will respond to public concerns and ensure that an urgent item is added to the committee agenda.
This will allow an update to be given on the current position at the hospital, the reasons for any failures together with proposals which ensure that standards are achieved in the future.
Council officials grabbing power as decision making vacuum continues at York Council?
Following the unprecedented attack on the Knights rugby club by a Council official, changes are being made to the way in which decisions are taken at the York Council.
Sadly it appears that more are to be delegated to Council officials with the controversial Sarah Tanburn being given powers to decide key transport issues.
The Council’s forward programme has recently been changed to prevent the Cabinet member (Levene) from holding meetings to consider several items including changes to the Rougier Street Bus “Interchange” (next to Roman House) and the Holgate Road (Iron Bridge to Acomb Road junction) Cycle Scheme
While the Cabinet member decision meetings were far from ideal (single members meetings rarely are) at least agendas were published in advance and residents had the opportunity to comment.
The best that residents can hope for, under the delegated decisions scheme, is for the agenda and decisions to be published on the Councils web site AFTER the meeting has been held.
The Council’s constitution hasn’t been updated to reflect the reduction in the number of Cabinet members and many believe that the process for appointing them (at the discretion of the Council Leader) has not yet been formally completed.
A recent Urgency committee meeting even failed to make routine changes to Council committee membership.
All in all, the Groups currently represented on the Council need to agree a system which ensures that any decisions which are needed, before the all out election scheduled for May 7th, are taken in an open way and that they reflect the wishes of the York Community.