According to Cathy...
January 2012
Childhood obesity sees welcome drop
We have seen a positive drop in the number of children classed as obese across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.
Over the past two years there has been a small reduction in the number of children in reception and Year 6 classes who are obese thanks to a number of initiatives which are being run by public health and local councils.
Health visitors and children's centre staff are continuing to receive training around breast feeding support, healthy eating and physical activity which is helping them to better support families in making health choices.
There are also a number of physical activity programmes such as the Fit and Active Football programme run in partnership with Leicester City Football Club, Playing 4 Health, School Sports Partnerships and family lifestyle clubs, as well as work to promote walking and cycling which can further help reduce obesity levels. For more details read our news release.
I am also delighted to report that extra funding is being made available in Leicester over the next two years to increase the number of patients being offered a free Health Check at GP practices across the city.
Leicester City Clinical Commissioning Group (LC CCG) will continue to fund Health Checks for the next two years, in addition to 2011/12, and will be targeting around £500,000 of additional transformational funding to help boost the number of people being screened and treated for heart disease, stroke, diabetes and kidney disease between the ages of 40 and 74.
Currently GP practices offer NHS Health Checks through a Local Enhanced Service (LES) to banded age groups, with those in the higher risk groups invited for screening first. The CCG's increase in funding aims to open up the checks to all eligible patients and to include treatment of key risk factors such as diabetes and hypertension when these are detected.
Sexual health has also been on the agenda, with people being urged to get checked out as part of the national Sexually Transmitted Infection Question Day.
The annual awareness day takes place in January to remind people that many common sexually transmitted infections, such as Chlamydia, can take two weeks to detect and those who had unprotected sex over Christmas or the New Year should get any symptoms checked out now.
To find out where you can have a test locally visit www.haveigotit.co.uk or visit NHS Choices for more information on sexual health.
From the board room
The board meeting this month covered our regular items such as performance targets, contracts, finance, quality and corporate governance. In addition, it considered the following areas:
Much discussion has taken place at the board over recent months about our assurance over the quality of care and patient safety in University Hospitals of Leicester (UHL). The Cluster chief executive Catherine Griffiths convened a group including the Cluster medical director Professor Aly Rashid, the Cluster director of nursing Judith Hill and the Cluster director of quality Liz Rowbotham to review the current data that is available through the quality contract, the patient safety system, external reports and quality visits.
The review concluded that there is assurance in many areas of service delivery and there is confidence in the improvements that have been made in the past year, for example in pressure ulcers and infection control. For areas where there was less assurance (patient experience and the improvement plan relating to trends in serious incidents) an action plan was agreed with UHL which includes more frequent visits by the Cluster to the specific areas. For further information please see Paper G.
The board received a progress report from the Emergency Care Network. This group consists of leaders from across the health and social care community in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. Its aim is to achieve a resilient and high-performing urgent care system by focusing on:
• patient inflows into the emergency department (A&E)
• flow through of patients whilst in the emergency department
• outflow of patients from UHL into Community Health Services and social care
The Network's high-level achievements over the last few weeks are detailed in Paper M, particularly the enhancement of the mental health liaison service and the deflection of patients attending the Emergency Department who can be treated either at the Urgent Care Centre (based at Leicester Royal Infirmary) or at their own GP practice.
The board has reviewed the performance of the Out of Hours service which was transferred to GP contract holders on 1 April 2011, who then opted to sub-contract to Central Nottinghamshire Clinical Services (CNCS). The service is assessed against National Quality Requirements and has been improving since April. For full details see Paper N.
A report was also received on the quality of care homes in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, all of which have been audited by the Cluster within the last year. This was the first time the Cluster had undertaken monitoring in care homes and all homes participated on a voluntary basis, welcoming the support and advice given to improve standards. All homes are currently assessed as providing reasonable or good care. A national contract has now been implemented across all care homes and homes are submitting data against key performance indicators which will be validated by the Cluster between February and June 2012. For further information see Paper O.
The Board also received a report from the Director of Public Health with regard to maintaining safe screening services during the transition of Public Health as part of the NHS reforms. The Cluster board will seek ongoing assurance that screening services, such as antenatal, newborn and cancer screening, continue to work effectively during the transition period. For more details see Paper S.
And finally...
NHS Leicester City, in partnership with Leicester City Council, has launched the next phase of its Leicester's Healthy Heart campaign, focussing on how smoking affects the heart.
With smokers nearly twice at risk of having a heart attack compared with people who have never smoked, we are working hard to encourage people to give up.
For help in quitting contact the STOP! smoking service by calling 0116 295 4141.