New commissioning group pledges to improve health of local people (From The Northern Echo)

New commissioning group pledges to improve health of local people

10:30am Wednesday 8th February 2012 in Darlington

A GROUP of doctors preparing to take over the running of health services in Darlington has said it is committed to providing excellent care to improve the health and life expectancy of people across the town.

The Darlington Shadow Clinical Commissioning Group (DSCCG) was set up in October last year in the light of the Government’s proposed reforms of the NHS that will see the commissioning and delivery of health services passed from primary care trusts to groups of GPs.

The Darlington group is made up of 12 GP member practices, representing more than 100,000 people in the borough, and will gradually replace NHS County Durham and Darlington in the coming years, if the NHS reforms go ahead as planned.

The DSCCG has prepared a report for the health and partnerships scrutiny committee at Darlington Borough Council to explain its role as a new commissioning organisation, its priorities and how it intends to operate in the next five years.

The group has a budget of £740m for its first five years and a number of objectives, which include improving the health status of local people, updating services to reflect the aging population and providing more services closer to home.

The report notes that nearly a quarter of people in the town live in the most deprived areas of England, with statistics showing that men from the least deprived areas of Darlington live 13.4 years longer than those from the most deprived areas.

The difference in life expectancy for women between the two areas is 10.3 years.

The report said: “We recognise we are at the very beginning of our journey towards being fully capable of delivering excellent commissioning of health and health care services.

“We do not underestimate the steep trajectory of development required to enable our organisation to become an intelligent commissioner with the capacity and capability to meet the health challenges of our population.

“By working with partners in social care and public health, we can jointly focus on the underlying risk factors and wider determinants of ill-health and health inequality so that the people of Darlington can expect to live longer, healthier lives in the future and the differences in life expectancy are narrowed.”