Agenda and minutes

The Director of Public Health updated Board Members on the current situation in Staffordshire with regard to Coronavirus (COVID-19).

There were none at this meeting.

RESOLVED – That the minutes of the meeting held on 8 January 2020 be confirmed and signed by the Co-Chair.

There were none at this meeting.

Stuart Lea, CIO/Digital Programme Director, Together We’re Better STP

Dr Ruth Chambers OBE, STP Clinical Lead for Technology Enabled Care Services Programme

The Board received a presentation from Dr Paddy Hannigan (Board Member), Stuart Lea Director of the Digital Programme and Dr Ruth Chambers, Clinical lead for Staffordshire STP’s technology enabled care services (TECS) programme, digital workstream board. The presentation outlined the digital vision and key deliverables of the Digital programme and noted the vision set out in both the Director of Public Health’s Annual Report and the NHS’s Long Term Plan, which included over 50 digital commitments.

There had been a technological revolution which had significantly changed relationships between the individual and organisations, for example retail banking, retail distribution, telecoms etc. There was an opportunity for health to develop similarly, changing their relationships with the patient and fostering a more proactive, bespoke, digitalised service.

The STP’s digital programme had 14 delivery workstreams:

1.    Citizen Health and Care Gateway – to provide a single point of access into all digitally enabled health and care services regardless of who provided them;

2.    Digital Citizen Communication – creating a series of pro-active digital engagement channels with citizens ranging from appointment reminders to 2-way personalised communication;

3.    Assistive Technology – implement a range of assistive technologies aimed at keeping people in their homes for longer, improving quality of life and preventing illness;

4.    Personal Health and Care Records – ensuring citizen’s health and care information was readily accessible to them and, where appropriate, they could record their own health and care information;

5.    Paperless by 2024 – remove all paper records for all partner organisations and ensure that all health and care information was recorded electronically;

6.    Intelligent Digital Healthcare – digitally augment and improve how health and care would be delivered and managed by identifying and implementing the latest digital tools and techniques into health and care settings;

7.    Integrated Care Records – develop and implement a solution to amalgamate health and care information into a single repository to improve the delivery;

8.    Population Health Management (PHM) – evaluate a range of current PHM pilots and implement a PHM toolkit to amalgamate health and care information into a single repository;

9.    Common Standards – ensure digital is a key enabler of change and delivers comparable, high quality information by adopting and embedding consistency and standardisation of digital tools and technologies;

10.Infrastructure and Service Modernisation – design and create modern infrastructure and supporting services to allow simple, assured and portable access for all required users;

11.Back-office Digitalisation – identifying and implementing opportunities for digital efficiencies;

12.Digital Innovation – create and foster a culture of digital innovation, engaging the wider workforce and stakeholders in this;

13.Digital Leadership and Capability – develop the digital capability of staff and citizens whilst improving the wider leadership capability;

14.Communication and Engagement – integrated planning and approach to communications and engagement.

Most of the digital programme was not funded and therefore there was a need to prioritise deliverables, define the business case and seek funding sources or alternative approaches to delivery.

Progress had been made with  ...  view the full minutes text for item 26.

Kerry Dove, Interim Head of Policy and Insight

Wendy Tompson, Research and Development Manager

A statutory duty of the H&WB was to produce Joint Strategic Needs Assessments (JSNAs) to identify the current and future health and social care needs of the local community. The March 2020 JSNA highlighted that performance across a number of areas had remained stable and similar to national performance figures. Areas of improvement included:

·         smoking related deaths falling by almost 10% in two years, with a lower rate than the national average;

·         a decline in teenage conception rates, now being in line with the national average;

·         a reduction in fuel poverty, now lower than the national position, with the Staffordshire Warmer Homes Fund supporting 130 of 1000 eligible homes to date;

·         death rates relating to cancer, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases having reduced over the last 15 years.

Six current health and care key issues had been identified within the JSNA for Staffordshire.

Wider determinants had significant impact on people’s health outcomes and therefore played a role in reducing health inequalities. Two thirds of Staffordshire’s young people don’t achieve a core level of attainment by the time they leave school. Whilst Staffordshire had higher than average employment the annual earnings were below the national average. One in ten residents (and 13% of children) lived in low-income households. Poor housing was estimated to cost the NHS between £22-£39m in Staffordshire per year. 559 homeless households were recorded in Staffordshire, with 256 of these being in priority need.

Frustrations were shared around persuading investment into housing projects to help address issues of the poor housing.

Members suggested that tackling homelessness/risk of homelessness could usefully be divided to target work around youth homelessness separately. Some work was already undertaken in schools through PHSE classes and Stafford Borough Council had developed a “Supporting Stafford Schools” website which addressed a range issues including homelessness, drugs and alcohol, and mental health.

Ageing well, with healthy life expectancy having a significant impact on demand for acute services. There were 65,900 more people in Staffordshire aged over 65+ than 20 years ago and it was estimated that by 2030 there would be 50% more older people aged 85+. Healthy life expectancy in Staffordshire was 63 years for men and 65 years for women. 22% of Staffordshire adults had limiting long term illness, rising to 53% for older people, both figures were above the national average. There were 3,900 fall admissions in Staffordshire per year. There was also a high proportion of delayed days due to transfer of care, attributed to both NHS and social care. Staffordshire was the worst performing of its 15 statistical neighbours for excess winter deaths, and ranked fourth worst in England, with Stafford ranked fifth worst in the country.

Concern was shared around excess winter deaths, and whilst this figure had not been standardised against the age profiles of its statistical neighbours, the figure highlighted an issue for concern. Preventative work was key to tackling this and digital technologies could also play a part. Many of the wider determinants would influence ageing well  ...  view the full minutes text for item 27.

RESOLVED- That the Forward Plan be noted.