Agenda item

Mr Kevin Byrne, the Council’s Head of Health and Strategic Partnerships, noted that a population health management approach gave partners the opportunity to gain a wider view of the needs of the local population, consistent with Hillingdon’s joint health and wellbeing priorities.  These priorities included the need to undertake further intelligence led enquiry to gain a greater insight into health and care disparities in the Borough. 

Consideration needed to be given to ensuring that the governance framework was in place to give population health management the importance that it needed.  It was noted that North West London Integrated Care System (NWL ICS) had commissioned Optum to work with Hillingdon Health and Care Partners (HHCP) to provide a framework and methodology to take forward population health priorities in the Borough with the Primary Care Networks (PCNs). 

Mr Byrne advised that partnership work with Brunel University had progressed and the JSNA data would be updated by the end of the month.  Discussions could then be undertaken through the HHCP Delivery Board to firm up the Borough’s priorities using intelligence led enquiry.  Ms Kelly O’Neill, the Council’s Interim Director of Public Health, advised that this approach would mean that different populations within the community could be segmented and interventions that truly worked could be identified.  This systematic and thorough methodology would allow the system to work together in the most effective way. 

Ms Patricia Wright, Chief Executive at The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (THH), advised that a lack of information about the local population had led to the relationship with residents being transactional.  To improve the outcomes for residents, preventative health measures needed to be managed better in the community.  This would result in better health outcomes as well as being more cost effective. 

A task and finish group would be deciding which of the four areas explored by the Action Learning Sets would be focussed on.  The work with Optum had started about three weeks previously and had involved the Managing Director of Healthwatch Hillingdon but the cohort had not yet been defined at a place level.  It would be important to retain representation from Healthwatch Hillingdon in this work going forward.

Dr Kuldhir Johal, Interim Borough GP Clinical Advisor of the North West London Clinical Commissioning Group (NWL CCG), advised that a range of work had been undertaken over the last few years and that there had been crossovers with other agencies such as the London Ambulance Service (LAS).  This work had been undertaken through PCNs and neighbourhood working and had been place based, e.g., blood pressure monitoring through community pharmacies.  This work in the community needed to be optimised, using the tools that had already been put in place during the joint working on the Covid vaccination programme. 

Ms Caroline Morison, Co-Chairman and Managing Director of Hillingdon Health and Care Partners (HHCP), advised that it would be important to pull together all of the individual pockets of work being undertaken to ensure that everything was working well.  In NWL, there had been an emphasis on the development process based on Joint Strategic Needs Assessments (JSNAs).  However, to date, there had been less clarity on how this would relate to funding or resource allocation. 

Councillor Jane Palmer, Cabinet Member for Health and Social Care, recognised the success of the Community Champions in the vaccination programme in Hillingdon and value of engaging with communities.  However, she queried how this would be sustained going forward.  Mr Byrne advised that additional funding to support this work had been received from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and had to be allocated by the end of March 2022.  He noted that 30 voluntary community health champions had been recruited during the pandemic and it was hoped that a further 40 would be recruited before the summer.  Champions had been asked to agree to support health initiatives in their communities and to complete a training programme.  H4All had been commissioned to lead this work and would continue the recruitment programme through the summer.  Thereafter, it was envisaged that the cohort of identified volunteer community champions would provide a legacy to continue to support health initiatives and the population health management approach described before.  This, of course, depended on the goodwill of volunteers and it would be important to ensure that the dialogue was two-way and that community voices were heard.

Although there was a lot of different data being collected, concern was expressed in relation to how quickly partners were able to act on the data before it went out of date.  Mr Byrne advised that, as the data changed all the time, partners captured key data sets and the most recent census data would also be released later this year.  All of this information was reviewed by a team who used the intelligence to identify where issues lay.  Ms O’Neill added that it was important to not rely too heavily on national data sets as these tended to lag too often and it would be key to use more local data to demonstrate better outcomes. 

There was positive support from the Board for the direction of travel.  Work would need to be undertaken to identify what data was required, capacity, etc, and then look at joining the data up.  It was agreed that the Board receive an update on the Population Health Management work, including that undertaken by Optum, at its next meeting on 14 June 2022. 

RESOLVED:  That:

1.    the action in place across Hillingdon Health and Care Partners to take Population Health Management approach to improving the health and wellbeing of the population be noted;

2.    the progress in partnership working with Brunel University and public health that will develop an updated Joint Strategic Needs Assessment and further intelligence leg enquiry which would provide greater insight to disparities in health and care in Hillingdon be noted;

3.    the Board receive an update on the work undertaken by Optum at its meeting on 14 June 2022.