Video: the roles at one CCG explained

Staff at Stockport CCG have published a series of brief videos explaining their roles, which provide a useful introduction to the new system of paying for health services.

The videos include the Chief Finance Officer Dan Jones (below), the Chief Clinical Officer Dr Ranjit Gill, Clinical Directors Jaweeda Idoo and Dr Cath Briggs. We’ve embedded most videos from the point where roles are explained.

Dr Ash Patel is Clinical Director of Quality and Performance at Stockport CCG: Continue reading

Transcripts: NUJ event – Reporting on our health services

The European Health Journalism website has published transcripts of the NUJ masterclass this month where I spoke about investigating health. Direct links are copied below:

You can also find audio of the three speakers other from me in a previous post on HMI Health.

Richard Vize on CCGs – notes from #reportinghealth

Carol Miers wrote up her notes on the speech by health expert Richard Vize at Help Me Investigate Health’s #reportinghealth event – we’ve reproduced them below with permission:

“GPs tend to be self employed business people, they hate NHS bureaucracy and hate being told what to do, now they are taken away from patient contact, they have to work on committees, they have their business interests compromised, they have become a cog in the bureaucracy and are subject to control from the Department of Health.”

This, added Richard Vize, opens up health reporting because there is now oversight from the Health and Wellbeing board which – given that GPs are vocal – will bring in an area of openness and debate. Continue reading

Event – NUJ: Reporting on our health services

The NUJ is hosting an event on April 11for a practical, informative and interactive session on reporting on our health services.” Alongside myself representing Help Me Investigate, a panel of much more interesting speakers includes:

  • BBC health correspondent Branwen Jeffreys
  • Health Service Journal’s Shaun Lintern
  • Leading health journalism expert John Lister

The event takes place at 7.00pm on Thursday 11 April at Headland House, Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8DP. Full flier here (PDF).

NHS plans for offender commissioning outlined

As part of the restructuring of the health service, the NHS Commissioning Board (CB) will have national responsibility for healthcare in secure environments.

These include:

  • 120 prisons
  • 16 Secure Children’s Homes
  • 4 Secure Training Centres
  • 12 Immigration Removal Centres
  • Police Custody Suites
  • Courts

Commissioning for Sexual Assault Services will also become the responsibility of the NHS CB.

Whilst the NHS CB has national responsibility for these institutions it will be free to commission services from local providers.

A document on the changes is available here.

Hello and goodbye – HMI Health gets new editors

My name is Alex Plough and for the past few months I’ve been working as the special projects editor of Help Me Investigate Health.

Regular readers will not recognise my name as I’ve been published little on the blog. But behind the scenes I have been picking apart the NHS reforms using Freedom of Information requests and collecting data for a comprehensive register of Clinical Commissioning Groups.

Unfortunately, due to a new job with a news agency I must now step down from this role.

I will be passing on my research to the fantastic group of up and coming investigative journalists behind CCGlatestnews. Continue reading

BBC College of Journalism teams up with Help Me Investigate for health reporting event

We’ve teamed up with the BBC College of Journalism for an event on reporting the new health system that comes into force this year.

Journalists and the new health system‘ is bringing together the people who will be scrutinising the new clinical commissioning system – journalists, bloggers and councillors – with the new players making key decisions.

It will discuss what are likely to be the important issues, as well as providing an opportunity for building new contacts with bodies such as CSUs and CCGs, hyperlocal bloggers and health experts.

The event is taking place at Birmingham’s Margaret Street on March 26. Sign up and get more details at http://reportingccgs.eventbrite.com/

Links for January 22nd