Issue - meetings

·         report by Director of Adult Social Care and Health and Chief Officer of Hastings and Rother CCG and Eastbourne, Hailsham, and Seaford CCG

6.1       The Board considered the East Sussex Better Together Strategic Commissioning Board’s (ESBT SCB) Annual Report.

6.2       In response to questions from the Board, the following key points were made:

·         It is vital to develop clinical networks and patient pathways across the footprint that make best use of the Royal Sussex County Hospital (RSCH) as a tertiary centre for the area in order to ensure the population has access to very specialist services when they need them. This means that an acute care strategy is better developed across the whole Sussex and East Surrey Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP) area rather than individually within each place-based plan such as East Sussex Better Together (ESBT). The same applies to the development of digital patient records and workforce recruitment and retention, which are better delivered across a larger geography.

·         The 3.4% increase per annum in NHS funding for the next four years is welcome, however, the natural rate of inflation is over 4% so it is still not enough. It is also likely to be distributed favourably to CCGs that can demonstrate that the local health economy is integrating with social care and investing in primary, mental health and community care, rather than just on a per capita basis.

·         The development of integrated roles through ESBT has increased the social care recruitment rate, for example, by making roles more attractive by including career development opportunities across health and social care, but the pay scale means that the posts available are competing with other sectors outside of health and social care. The ESBT test-bed year has also demonstrated that there is a fairly fixed potential workforce, meaning that new roles are often filled by people who are already employed within the system. Therefore prioritisation is being made to developing and recruiting to those ESBT projects that will have the biggest impact on health and social care in order to make the best use of a limited resource.

·         A significant amount of public engagement has been undertaken including collaborative ESBT consultation events twice per year, and a public reference forum commissioned to be delivered by East Sussex Community Voice. More could be done, for example, through an ongoing and proactive (rather than statutory) engagement with the public about future service provision and solutions to financial difficulties. 

6.3       The Board RESOLVED to note the report.

10.1     The Board considered the draft Annual Report to the Health and Wellbeing Board.

10.2     The Board RESOLVED to agree the draft annual report to the East Sussex Health and Wellbeing Board subject to the addition of diagrams making it clear where ESBT Alliance budget is spent and how the Alliance is organised.