Agenda and minutes

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The Chair referred Members present to agenda Item 1 as shown on the agenda in respect of filming at this meeting, and Members noted the information contained therein’.

To receive any apologies for absence.

Apologies for absence were received from Cllr Clarke, Cllr Chakraborty, Cllr Chowdhury, Cllr Cohen and Cllr Revah.

The Chair will consider the admission of any late items of Urgent Business.  (Late items will be considered under the agenda item where they appear.  New items will be dealt with under item 10 below).

None.

None.

To consider any requests received in accordance with Part 4, Section B, paragraph 29 of the Council’s constitution.

None.

·         Whittington Health NHS Trust

·         North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust

·         Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust

Whittington Health NHS Trust

Sarah Wilding, Chief Nurse & Director of Allied Health Professionals at Whittington Health NHS Trust, provided a short summary of draft Quality Accounts for the Trust. She explained that the Quality Priorities established in 2020 had been extended from three years to four years as it was recognised that, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it would take longer to embed change. However, there had also been a stakeholder consultation process to ensure that the current priorities were reflective of the current need. Previous progress against the Quality Priorities was set out in section 3 of the report.

Sarah Wilding then responded to issues raised by the Committee:

• Asked by Cllr Connor about the reasons for changes to priorities and targets, Sarah Wilding explained that there had already been progress in some areas but also because of developing an understanding of where the organisation currently was, including through feedback from the consultation and other data.
• Cllr White highlighted services to help people manage long-term conditions such as type 1 diabetes which included contact with doctors, dieticians and other people with the same condition. He considered that investment in this kind of support network for people with long-term conditions could help to improve health outcomes and reduce future costs to the NHS and asked how this was addressed through the Quality Accounts. Sarah Wilding agreed that there were multiple examples of investing up front in health promotion and long-term support leading to people living longer and healthier lives. She said that this was only ‘nodded to’ in the Quality Accounts but that there was a lot of ongoing work with patient engagement and experience which was developing these kind of opportunities. A new Head of Patient Experience had recently been appointed to progress this work. Investment needed to be targeted and there were examples set out in the Quality Accounts such as improving quality of care for patients with sickle cell disease.
• Cllr Connor asked whether there was collaboration between hospitals on specific areas of work, such as those described in the previous answer on health improvement. Sarah Wilding responded that there were more opportunities to work at a system level across different organisations and that this was part of their ongoing work. She said that that there were strong links with UCLH on patient pathways, including the realignment of cancer pathways and having the right staff in the right place. Another example was partnership working with UCLH on patients having elective Caesarean sections where there was more capacity at the Whittington, so UCLH (University College Hospitals London) patients could choose to use the facilities at the Whittington and there were collaborative conversations between the two Trusts on improving these services. In addition, the Chief Nurses from different Trusts met on a regular basis with projects across the system (e.g. enhanced care for patients with mental health needs) looking at how best to standardise and learn from one another.
• Cllr Milne commented that engaging with ‘hard to reach groups’  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.