New Devon Clinical Commissioning Group officially launches today

NHS Northern, Eastern and Western Devon Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) officially launched today (1 April 2013).

From today local GPs and clinicians will be responsible for buying services for people in the northern, eastern and western areas of Devon from healthcare providers such as local hospitals, the community and mental health services.

Rebecca Harriott, chief officer at Northern, Eastern and Western Devon CCG said she was pleased to launch the new organisation.

“The hard work starts now, realising our vision of healthy people, living healthy lives, in healthy communities,” she said.

The area served by the CCG also includes the catchment areas of the three large acute hospitals - Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, North Devon District Hospital in Barnstaple and the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital in Exeter.

The CCG has taken on these responsibilities from the former primary care trust of NHS Devon, Plymouth and Torbay.

Rebecca Harriott continued: “Our mission is to make sure everyone has access to high-quality sustainable services that promote wellbeing and care when people are unwell.

“We know that demand on the NHS is increasing as people live longer and have more complex needs so we must look at ways to ensure we meet this.

“We are the largest CGG in the country and we intend to use our size for the maximum benefit of local people.

“We also want to design services that can, wherever possible, be delivered when, where and how people choose.”

Dr Tim Burke, chair of Northern, Eastern and Western Devon CCG, welcomed the launch of the CCG.

“We are very much looking forward to working with our public, our local government partners our NHS providers and our voluntary and independent sectors to commission the best possible services we can.

“We have already spoken to and involved people and organisations in the development of our CCG and will hold a number of public events in the near future to introduce the CCG, our priorities and vision. We also want to give people a chance to have their say about their health priorities.

“Our vision is ‘healthy people, living healthy lives, in healthy communities’ and we will only achieve this if we put the patient at the heart of everything we do, working with people to deliver the right NHS services locally.

“We want people to tell us what they think about our services and one of the easiest ways to do this is to visit our new website, which can be found at  HYPERLINK "http://www.newdevonccg.nhs.uk" www.newdevonccg.nhs.uk”

Just a few examples of the differences the CCG has already made for local people include:

• Working closely with Devon County Council and Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust to develop a ‘hospital at home’ initiative in Woodbury, Exmouth and Budleigh Salterton. This is a virtual hospital ward that provides 24 hour extended basis care, nursing and rehabilitation to people in the area.

• Being awarded funding by the Department of Health to provide support to people with dementia in Plymouth through the introduction of dementia support workers. This has meant there is equal provision of a dementia service across all localities within the CCG, which had not always been the case.

• Many people are seen in hospital when they don’t need to be – and there are plenty of examples of people forgetting or simply failing to notify us when they can’t make an appointment. This is, of course, inefficient and means vital staff resource is wasted. In some specialities we’ve reduced the number of outpatient appointments by up to 60 per cent – not by cutting appointments where there is a genuine need – but by really looking into if each and every appointment was really needed.

The commissioning of healthcare services in South Devon and Torbay will be the responsibility of South Devon and Torbay CCG.