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The new Congenital Heart Disease review: 37th update

Since the publication of this blog John Holden has left NHS England.

Welcome to the first blog for 2015. It’s been a month since the last one – I thought I should allow you to enjoy the festive season in peace! However, the work on the review has not stopped and we continue where we left off.

Your feedback

From the conversations I’ve had recently I know that people have followed this review from the outset, including the detailed notes and actions from meetings. On this occasion there’s not a lot of meetings to report, so I’m taking the opportunity to remind everyone that we are working towards six objectives, and the provide a very quick update in just a few words:

  • Objective 1 and 2 – our consultation on draft standards and service specifications closed on Monday 8 December, with over 500 responses, and the analysis of what you told us is underway. Our refresh of the existing activity data and has been reported in the blog previously, and we have modelled potential future demand for services. We will update this as necessary.
  • Objective 3 and 4 – we are working with national and local commissioners and our provider engagement group to establish a timely and appropriate commissioning process to enable effective delivery of services.
  • Objective 5 – we continue to work with providers and patient groups 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.
  • Objective 6 – we are preparing an options appraisal report with recommendations for the Programme Board in February, which will discuss the actions required to help improve antenatal and neonatal detection rates.

Patients, families and their representatives

Our Patients & Public engagement and advisory group meets again on 14 January.

We will be looking at the review’s next steps: you can see the agenda here.

Clinicians and their organisations

We are due to meet our Provider Leaders’ and Clinicians’ groups on 3 and 4 February respectively.

NHS England and other partners

A meeting of the review’s Programme Board was held on the 4 December – minutes and meeting information can be found here.

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The planned 13 January Programme Board meeting has been cancelled to enable a review of the consultation responses before reporting back to the Board.  The next meeting of our Programme Board is scheduled for 18 February.

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John Holden was previously Director of Policy, Partnerships and Innovation, since the publication of these blogs he has left NHS England.