The ICB and trusts within Cornwall have established a joint committee to look at system improvement and quality, according to the ICB’s board papers.
The committee’s membership will be comprised of six members from Cornwall and Isles of Scilly ICB, Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust and Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.
The committee will hold responsibility for oversight against the integrated care strategic quality priorities.
ICB board member and chair of the National Pharmacy Association, Nick Kaye, will chair the committee.
In its board papers for April, the ICB said the Service Improvement and Quality Committee (SIQC) had been established to ensure the healthcare system was delivering in a way that ‘secures continuous improvement in the quality of services’, including reducing inequalities.
At the same meeting, it was revealed that the ICB was ‘not meeting the majority’ of system oversight framework (SOF) metrics for segment four, which is the level that indicates an ICB needs mandated intensive support, despite being on the level above (three). It suggested the ICB may be moved to level four due to ‘non-delivery of constitutional standards’.
In the integrated performance report, it said: ‘The Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly system remains in SOF3 segment however the system is not meeting the majority of the SOF4 threshold metrics. Overall for all SOF indicators (including leadership and capability, people and preventing ill health, the position deteriorated.
‘The regional review of SOF commenced in early April where there is a risk the system may move to SOF4.’
It comes after the concept of establishing two joint committees was discussed at the ICB’s July board meeting: a finance and performance committee and a quality one. They were originally intended to be established by September 2023, with inaugural meetings in October.
However, after legal advice, the introduction of the joint committees was paused. They restarted again for the joint quality and improvement committee in the last quarter of 2023/24.
The committee’s role will include:
- Having a focused list of quality agenda items each time it meets (e.g. mortality, frailty, – and including our top priorities in our joint forward plan).
- Oversight of key quality improvement priorities that focus on maximising safety and minimizing harm to patients, to inform financial allocations.
- Focus on the quality aspects of system performance and plans to address core issues commissioned.
- Oversight and assurance of the NHS C&IoS trajectories Vs plan, and as agreed in the commissioned delivery budget plans, to ensure they are achieved in a timely manner.
- To ensure one analysis / message and data reporting of the quality of our services is consistently given to CFT, RCHT and ICB’s own Quality committees, own Boards and own staff and regulator.
- Development and endorsement of 5-year quality improvement plan ahead of ICB Board approval.
- Oversight of our system 5-year quality improvement plan.
- System oversight framework (SOF) oversight.
- Population health improvement (NHS elements).
Source: Cornwall ICB board papers
