Clinical senate review supports proposals for hospital changes.
The Mid and South Essex STP is today (Thursday June 28) publishing an independent clinical review of the proposals for changes to some specialist services in the three hospitals.
The report, prepared by the East of England Clinical Senate, follows a detailed review, which took place in May 2018, and describes the “significant progress” made in developing the proposals.
The review involved a site visit to one of the hospitals and a series of panels to look at each of the proposed service changes in which more than 30 clinicians and staff from the three hospitals presented.
The senate report backs the plans to bring specialist teams together and gives strong support to the majority of proposals as being safe and effective and comments on “the clear desire to improve services, standardise care and embed quality improvement”.
It also highlights as positive the way in which the three hospitals are working together, the strong clinical leadership in evidence and the ambition to address current inequality in the outcomes of care for patients.
The role of the clinical senate is to provide independent advice and guidance to healthcare planning. The panels that undertook the reviews involved senior clinicians from outside Essex alongside patient representatives.
Throughout the pre-consultation phase, the STP sought independent expert advice from the East of England Clinical Senate on four occasions as the proposals for service change were developed.
Since the earlier proposals had been refined, this was a formal stage II review by the clinical senate, following the 16 week public consultation which ended in March.
The report makes six key recommendations for clinical teams to consider including:
• Encouragement (in line with previous senate reports) to seek further separation of elective and emergency care.
• To develop ambitious, patient focused outcome measures to demonstrate improvement during implementation of any changes.
• To ensure that the necessary IT activities are in place so that clinical information can be accessed across the three hospitals.
As part of the review process the senate has also requested further exploration on the proposals for emergency general surgical services and the hospitals’ clinical teams have committed to provide further clinical assurance on this speciality.
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Dr Celia Skinner, chief medical officer for the three hospitals said:
“We are delighted the clinical senate supports our proposed direction of travel for specialist health and care services in mid and south Essex and welcome the helpful insight such an appraisal gives.
“The senate review provided our doctors and nurses with a great opportunity to discuss and debate how we want to improve our services for local people, with their peers from outside of the local area, and I would like to thank all those who took the time to be part of this important process.”
The independent report of the clinical senate, alongside the outcome report of the public consultation feedback published on May 22 2018, will be considered by the Joint Committee of the five clinical commissioning groups as part of its decision making process on July 6 2018.
The full report from the East of England Clinical Senate is available from: http://v1.nhsmidandsouthessex.co.uk/background/clinical-evidence/
Full details of the consultation and the outcome report can be found at nhsmidandsouthessex.co.uk
ENDS
Editors’ notes:
1. For further information contact
2. The East of England Clinical Senate is one of twelve Clinical Senates established across England in 2013. It involves an assembly of multi-professional experts from health and care and patient and citizen representatives. For further information, please visit www.eoesenate.nhs.uk
3. The Mid and South Essex STP brings together all health and care organisations to work on a single plan to respond to the rising number of people who need health and care services. For more information visit nhsmidandsouthessex.co.uk
4. The CCG Joint Committee meeting, which will be held in public, will take place from 2.30pm at the Chelmsford City Council Chamber, Civic Centre, Duke Street, Chelmsford, CM1 1JE
If members of the public wish to attend they are advised to book ahead so that appropriate arrangements can be made, as admission will be on a first
come, first served basis with priority given to those who have given advance
notification. Spaces (two per request) can be booked by emailing:
or calling .