We just don’t know the answer to the question in our title, but we need to find out a lot more. After all GPs are our gateway to the NHS and according to the last estimate in 2013 there were some 340 million consultations annually. It is now clear that there is a top-down national major re-organisation of GP and other primary care NHS health…
We can now bring readers up to date with the saga of Brent CCG’s misleading ads which said “A&E is for life-threatening emergencies only”. The ASA has found that the CCG breached the Advertising Code and told them not to use the ads again in their current form. Brent Patient Voice (BPV), which represents Brent patients, tried several times but failed to get the CCG…
The new Brent NHS Community Cardiology Service provided at Willesden and Wembley Centres for Health and Care continues to have serious shortcomings. Brent Patient Voice has been monitoring the introduction of this service since it started in April 2015 and is represented on the joint contract review group with the provider the Royal Free London NHS Hospital Trust (RFL) and Brent Clinical Commissioning Group (Brent…
Readers who were awake may have noticed a fleeting appearance by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on BBC London TV just before Christmas. He was announcing the London Health Devolution Agreement, supposedly signed by George Osborne himself along with all London CCGs and all London Borough Councils. Ever vigilant on behalf of Brent patients, BPV asked Brent CCG and Brent Council about the process by…
Brent Patient Voice welcomes the findings of the Mansfield Report. BPV Chair, Robin Sharp, said: “We are pleased that Mansfield endorses the extensive evidence that we and many other independent people submitted. Why has the NHS greeted it with silence?” The Report of the Independent Healthcare Commission for North West London under Michael Mansfield QC was published on 2nd December. It brings no comfort for…
In October we referred the CCG poster with the words “A&E is for life-threatening emergencies only” to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) on the grounds that the statement was untrue and could be dangerous. We did this reluctantly and only after several attempts to persuade the CCG to modify or withdraw the offending words. On 13 November we had an initial response from the ASA…
A&E Departments are an essential part of the NHS provision of emergency care. No-one needs to be told this. However Brent Patient Voice has objected strongly to an advertising campaign promoted by Brent and some nearby CCGs. This is because posters placed around the Borough say “A&E is for life-threatening emergencies only”. This is strictly not true. We have put it to the CCG that…
The BPV Steering Group were extremely sorry to learn a few days ago of the sudden death of Brent Councillor Dan Filson. Although he had much experience of local affairs in another Borough he had only recently moved to Brent. He was first elected to Brent Council in 2014 and quickly became known as an effective member of the Planning Committee. This led to his…
The national NHS news remains worrying. Today we have news of junior doctors voting on a strike. A new OECD report says that Britain now comes low in the international league tables for most categories of national healthcare. Male expectation of life at birth comes 14th out of 34, and 24th for women. Cancer 5 year survival rates are 21 out of 23 nations for…
We are glad to acknowledge that Brent CCG has responded in detail to questions from the BPV Steering Group posed at its two (yes two) Annual General Meetings this autumn. The second was held on 14th October after BPV pointed out that the first was not constitutional. See our earlier story “The AGM that never was”. The CCG responses have been put together in a…