Agenda item

The Committee considered a joint report of the Chief Executive of the County Council and NHS Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit, which provided an update on performance based on the available data at May 2020. A copy of the report, marked ‘Agenda Item 9’, is filed with these minutes.

The Committee welcomed Kate Allardyce, Senior Performance Manager and Alison Buteux, Performance Manager, both of NHS Midlands and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit, to the meeting for this item.

Arising from discussions the following points were noted:

(i)          Some data collection had been paused due to the Covid19 crisis and the national data in the report only covered the period up to February 2020, therefore the impact from Covid19 on the performance of the health service was not shown in the figures. The true impact of Covid19 would be seen in the next performance report considered by the committee later in the year. Guidance was awaited from NHS England regarding the performance framework to be used in future and some of the metrics were likely to change.

(ii)         Members raised concerns regarding the impact Covid19 was having on the accuracy of some performance data, for example it was noted that some families of deceased persons had complained that Covid19 was recorded as the cause of death on the death certificate when they believed it was not the true cause. There were concerns that during lockdown people had not been using the NHS even when they had serious medical problems such as heart attacks and they would need to be encouraged to start using services again. The Chairman reported that the Lead Member for Health and Wellbeing shared the concerns regarding the data and had stated that financial recovery was forecast to be between 18 months to 3 years so it would be some time before the system returned to ‘normal’.

(iii)       The data indicated that many adults had been exercising more than usual under lockdown though children were spending more time indoors which needed to be monitored. Whilst it was a positive that there had been an increase in cycling and walking during the Covid19 lockdown improvements needed to be made to the highways infrastructure to ensure the safety of both cyclists and pedestrians. The Director of Public Health was working with colleagues in the Environment and Transport Department to address these issues and it was intended that maximum use would be made of Government grants for improving highways for example creating more cycle paths.

(iv)       The numbers of new Covid19 cases and the numbers of deaths from Covid19 had peaked and then plateaued at a lower level, however there was still a risk of infection and coming out of lockdown had to be managed carefully.

(v)        Although HIV testing coverage in Leicestershire was significantly worse than England overall, the reason why no figures for late HIV diagnosis were provided in the report was not that the data was not available, it was due to the small numbers involved which raised confidentiality issues meaning the data could not be published at a public level. 

(vi)       Concerns were raised that the state pension age was being raised at a time when healthy life expectancy was reducing and the Director of Public Health would need to give consideration to how to raise this issue nationally.

RESOLVED:

(a)        That the performance summary and issues identified be noted;

(b)        That the Director of Public Health be thanked for the work of his department in tackling the spread of Covid19 in Leicestershire whilst continuing to carry out the more routine duties of the Public Health department.