Plea for more community engagement and less red tape around Leighton Buzzard health services
A passionate plea for more community engagement and less red tape around health service provision for Leighton Buzzard has been made by a member of a local volunteer support organisation.
“I’m aware of so much bureaucracy involved in simple tasks that we find ourselves involved in a vicious, unbroken circle,” Tom Wise, from the Leighton Buzzard voluntary patient transport group (LBVPT), told Central Bedfordshire Council’s health and wellbeing board.
“The Central East integrated care board (ICB) hasn’t identified a need,” he warned. “I think you’re part of the ‘in’ crowd, either incompetent, inadequate, inept or a combination of all three.
“There’s no infrastructure funding and you failed to ask for any. I’ve seen no efforts to consult with people in Leighton Buzzard. You say development and operation of a neighbourhood health plan will require input and awareness of key interdependencies.
“Workshops are referenced to help progress the plan, but the voluntary community in the town seems to have been overlooked by you. The patients participation group for Leighton Road surgery hasn’t been asked and neither have other such groups locally.”
There are three GP surgeries in Leighton Buzzard, and a small health clinic with no patient parking, he added. “There are three hospitals, the Luton and Dunstable, Stoke Mandeville and Milton Keynes, with more than 30 clinics affiliated to them.
“These stretch from the Cressex Industrial Estate in High Wycombe, 40 miles away from Leighton Buzzard, to Silsoe, 20 miles in the other direction. When will you ask the people of this town what they want and need?
“Or will you just plod on regardless crossing ‘t’s and dotting ‘i’s to fill in required boxes on some pointless bureaucratic plan? And, when you know, what will you do?”
Central East ICB’s director of neighbourhood health and partnerships for Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes Maria Wogan replied: “Our planning for neighbourhood health centres is at an early stage, with community engagement very much part of that process.
“We’ve been waiting for guidance because we’ll be held to account as a statutory organisation and partner on this board to delivering what the government expects from ICBs. We now have that clarity, but that doesn’t mean we’re starting afresh.
“We’ve been working on the planned development of four neighbourhood centres proposed for Central Bedfordshire, which needs finalising this year.
“We’re starting with how we coordinate better care for people with frailty aged over 65 in their neighbourhood, closer to home. That would help address some of the issues you raised about travelling to several different locations for blood tests and other clinics.
“As a driver, you see at first hand patients getting services from different hospitals. The neighbourhood health plan is intended to address that fragmentation and lack of coordination for local residents.
“On engagement, we’ll want to talk to that cohort of frail people particularly, as well as those over 65, asking what do they think would help shape a neighbourhood?
“I appreciate your frustration. Please work with us over the next year to get this plan right and to get the services started properly.
“The way we want to design those services is with the residents who use them and the clinicians who deliver them, rather than the bureaucratic tick box approach with which you expressed frustration”, she explained.
“We’re working on an infrastructure plan for implementing neighbourhood health centres, which we need to submit by the end of May. This will be based on population needs and what assets there are already in the community.
“Where those health centres are impacts on the way we’ll deliver future neighbourhood healthcare.”
A progress update is planned for the next meeting of the board.