Enter the Medway Clinical Commissioning Group

Letter confirming the hospital appointment with The Great Man arrived as promised. Stamp hand applied rather than envelope being put through the usual franking machine.
Hint to Hospitals: offering to send letters by email to those who use it daily might save a few pennies, 62 of them in this case, and reduce the handling costs.

Then a Very Interesting Thing happened..............I got a "Tweet". My first ever "Tweet", but it was the origin of the "Tweet" that was Very Interesting...............Medway CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group) no less!

I should warn you, dear reader, that you might wish to skip the purple bit below. Once upon a time, in a land far, far away called London, I was a commissioner of NHS services so I may drone on a bit.

For those not intimately acquainted with the arcane structure of the NHS, the CCG plays a pivotal role. Goes something like this.................

• Government decides how much it will spend on the NHS
• Money is distributed by a bunch of civil servants to the bits that need it. One of these is local Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs)
• CCGs decide what services are needed in their area and commission them.
• Hospitals, other NHS services and "for profit" providers of healthcare are given the money

In NHS speak, the DH gives money to the CCGs who give it to (mostly) NHSFTs. An NHSFT is a National Health Service Foundation Trust; Medway Hospital is one of these.

The above is a gross over-simplification, but trying to explain it all would take years.


Are you still with me?


Sure?


Ok, now for the fun bit............

Some years ago, there was much disquiet that the local commissioning of health services was run by faceless bureaucrats and lots of GPs said that they would be much better at it. GPs are important to the NHS, even if they are only contracted to it and not employed by it (they are actually small businesses, but that is for another day). The answer was to dismantle the PCTs (don't ask!) and create CCGs. In a Clinical Commissioning Group, local GPs are the key decision makers, albeit with a bunch of faceless bureaucrats working for them.

Safe to start reading again............

The CCG not only gives money to hospitals in return for services, it also had a critical role in monitoring the services that are given to us. They are the proxy for us, the people who use and pay for the NHS, so I was both surprised and delighted to receive a "Tweet" asking whether they could discuss my experiences with them. No brainer! Of course I will, but not just yet.

Call me either cautious, cynical, or optimistic, but I will wait until whatever treatment plan I agree to is well underway before I engage with the CCG fully. I earnestly hope that, apart from the odd glitch, I will be able to give them a really good account of the services I receive. Medway Maritime Hospital may be fairly small and in Special Measures, but it is my local hospital and I would dearly love to be able to play a part, however small, in rebuilding its reputation.

If you made it this far, a little light entertainment as a reward:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1dvAxA9ib0