Your feedback

Our consultation on draft standards and service specifications closed on Monday 8 December, and we’ve received more than 500 responses, which are currently being analysed. We will say more about the next steps, and likely timetable, in the new year.  Thank you to everyone who has responded.

Patients, families and their representatives

The next meeting of our Patients and Public engagement and advisory group is scheduled for 14 January.

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If you’ve followed the blog you will know all about the children and young people’s events we ran over the Easter holidays, and our session with local government and Healthwatch in Birmingham. However I have not previously provided a link to the write-up of these events, so if you’d like to know more about what was discussed, please see our ‘Meetings’ page for further information.

Clinicians and their organisations

The next meeting of our Clinicians’ engagement & advisory group is scheduled for 4 February.

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The next meeting of our Providers’ engagement and advisory group is scheduled for 3 February.

NHS England and other partners

Colleagues from across NHS England have continued to attend meetings with local government.  We do not have a complete list of every formal or informal discussion; for your information, Felicity Cox, our Area Director for Wessex, attended the Health Overview & Scrutiny Panel, Portsmouth City Council, on 4 November.

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Meetings of the review’s Board Task & Finish group and Programme Board were held on 24 November and 4 December respectively. The meetings looked at the next steps in the process, potential handover to NHS England’s new specialised commissioning team, and commissioning issues. Minutes of the Programme Board will be published as soon as they are available. Previous Programme Board minutes can be found on the ‘Programme Board’ page.

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The next meeting of our Programme Board is scheduled for 13th January.

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The Task & Finish Group has provided a routine update to NHS England’s main Board for its meeting held in public on 17 December in London.  You can read the Board paper here.

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The consultation on draft standards tends to dominate the headlines, but work has continued on the review’s other objectives. Objective 5 aims to establish a system for the provision of information about the performance of CHD services, to help patients make informed choices and to give valuable feedback to NHS England as the commissioner of the service. We have visited a number of hospitals in order to understand the current information they are providing and what further information could be used. We are also meeting members of our Patient and Public engagement and advisory group to identify what further information they would find helpful. We have been looking at a number of different issues including activity, cost, and various outcomes such as mortality and patient experience.  The discussions to-date have highlighted important areas of information which could be developed. Following these initial meetings a report will be produced explaining what we have heard and how we propose to progress the work.

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As we move into 2015 I’d like to express my thanks on behalf of the team to all of you who have continued to contribute in so many ways over the past year.  Your support, challenge, expert input and constructive criticism have been invaluable.

Have a happy new year, and stay warm!