Health Care and Wellbeing e-newsletter for February 2010

Hard times ahead?  A bleak financial outlook for the NHS has been widely forecast: the question for scrutiny is how to maintain maximum influence on difficult decisions, on behalf of local communities.  To discuss this with the NHS directly there are one or two additional places for members at The Healthy Accountability Forum on March 19th.

National Qualiity Board 'There is strong evidence that since their introduction, OSCs have helped to improve both the quality of services and the experience of people who use them'. On 25th February this appeared in the National Quality Board ‘Review of Early Warning Systems’ to co-incide with the Robert Francis Inquiry Report into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

Health Select Committee - Commissioning Prof Chris Ham and Dr Jennifer Dixon give evidence to the committee of the realities of World Class Commissioning and Practice Based Commissioning.

Quality Accounts The regulatory framework for Quality Accounts in 2010 is before Parliament and due to come in to force on 1st April.

 Working with the CQC The CQC has published further useful guidance on working with Overview and Scrutiny including key dates in their programme.

 CfPS annual conference & Good Scrutiny AwardsThe conference is shaping up to be an exciting and informative 2 days.  Find out here about the latest speakers to confirm

Commissioning for Health 
Understand the purpose and process of commissioning health services in the NHS and why it is important topic for scrutiny in our latest publication available free.

 New to the library are The Inverse Care Law and Health and Wellbeing of Caravan and Chalet Park Park Residents  Both reviews were supported by the CfPS Innovative Scrutiny Programme 2009.