Wednesday 15th February 2012 Dates in my Diary:  Wed 22nd Feb at CQC H.Q in London for a HealthWatch Advisory Group meeting.  There are 2 separate meetings - AM is a presentation from Spencer Du Bois on branding and communication.  PM is the normal, if shortened HWAG type agenda.   Jim Kerr

Friday 3rd February 2012 Today I spent a couple of hours at SHINE in Headingley, for a consultation run by Deloitte to find out service user views on the performance of Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust.  This is part of a national campaign to assess all Health Trusts, commissioned by Central Government.  I felt sorry for the Trust coming under this scrutiny when they've only been established for a year.  And the services they deliver don't always attract high profile attention in the way that in-hospital care does, so not so much anecdotal feedback filters out.  It'll be interesting to see what Deloitte got out of it.  Jim Kerr

Tuesday 24th January 2012 During a PEAT inspection at St James...

8th December 2011

The latest news this week is that the Care Quality Commission is working on a letter to be sent in January to Local Authority HealthWatch Commissioners setting out the CQC view of what an effective HealthWatch should look like.  This is going to reflect the work CQC are currently doing with the 22 LINks involved in their National Development Project. 

 

At a project meeting on Wednesday those LINks in attendance, including myself representing Leeds LINk, had a brainstorming session on the kind of detail which needs to go in that letter.  I think, as a result, the CQC got a lot of strong and valuable messages to use.

 

CQC have decided on this course of action because of feedback being received from Local Authorities and LINks and because the Department of Health hasn’t issued such guidance as yet.  They are also conscious of the commissioning timescale and that January is pretty much the latest this sort of communication can afford to go out.

 

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