17.12.14
‘Wide support’ for radical reconfiguration of care in Greater Manchester
The Healthier Together CCG consortium says three-quarters of people who took part in the consultation on its radical shake-up NHS services in Greater Manchester agreed with the need for change.
It was the largest public response to a regional health consultation in England in a decade.
The proposals to reshape primary and community care are aimed at improving access to GPs and keeping more people out of hospitals, while also joining up care. The review also proposes some major changes to hospital services across the conurbation and surrounding areas, with the centralisation of emergency and high-risk general surgery at four or five ‘specialist’ hospitals.
NHE has not yet been able to independently analyse the consultation response statistics, but has requested to see them.
Healthier Together – a consortium of the CCGs across Greater Manchester – told us that four out of five people consulted agreed that the NHS and local authorities need to work more closely, and more than eight out ten agreed that children and young people should be cared for closer to home.
Perhaps most importantly Healthier Together said the figures show that more than two-thirds of people are in favour of the ‘single service’ that would see doctors and nurses from multiple hospitals combining to work as one team across several sites.
Dave Hall from market research company ORS, which independently verified the figures, said people had “thought deeply” about the issues and their views were a “valuable contribution” to the debate about the future of the region’s health services.
He said: “The consultation wasn’t a ‘tick box’ exercise. The balance of opinion is being reviewed in detail and people’s arguments, evidence and reasons are being examined before any decisions are taken.”
Nearly 30,000 people and organisations took part in the consultation. More than 22,400 people completed consultation questionnaires while others sent letters and petitions, made pledges and responded to household surveys and went to meetings.
Leila Willliams, director of NHS service transformation in Greater Manchester, said: “We are pleased that so many people have recognised the need for urgent change to improve services for everyone.”
However, as previously reported by NHE, the consultation had to be extended three and a half weeks as not enough people had taken part. Healthier Together had set an original target of 50,000 responses but three quarters of the way through they had only received 8,500.
Greater Manchester has a population of 2.7 million, and the changes in the proposals will affect the vast majority of them.
A senior executive at a trust that would be affected by the changes told NHE the consultation process had been a “complete mess”. The executive said that at one public event where 50 people turned up, not one had a positive thing to say, with common complaints being the consultation document was “confusing” and reads like the decision has already been made.
Local MPs have been critical of the consultation since it started. David Nuttall, Conservative MP for Bury North, does not believe the consultation has been a democratic process and says the consultation document is full of “gobbledegook”.
Local politicians and health chiefs' dissatisfaction with the proposed changes and the way the consultation was handled were highlighted by NHE’s Sam McCaffrey when he took an in-depth look at Healthier Together in September.
The CCGs will now analyse the responses to determine how hospitals should be reorganised. A decision is not expected to be made until after next year’s general election.
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