Column: Health Matters
If you were wondering why there have been so few posts on the Leighton Linslade Health Provision Group Facebook page or any response regarding the Outline Business Case published by the Bedford Luton and Milton Keynes ICB Health Board I would like to reassure you that we are still attending meetings and working on our 2025 Campaign.
But fundamentally we are still awaiting a number of responses from the ICB to our Freedom of Information requests.
Since our Meeting with BLMK in November 2024 we have received a lot more data to help us understand some aspects of the Towns Health Service Allocation and the ICB’s rationale for funding allocations but at the same time some requests appear to be taking a lot longer than we would have expected.
Why does this matter? Because mis representing the issues, as happened recently on social media posts regarding one of local practices only caused unnecessary concern for residents and even more stress to our frontline health workers, and was something that the ICB could have also avoided with better communication of the facts!
We want our Towns Campaign to accurately report residents potential barriers to Health Care services and create a 2025 Campaign that challenges the ICB and Council to look beyond the persistent narrative over several years of “organisations are needing to make difficult decisions around which projects can be afforded with the limited funding that is available” and start to reassure residents that they are starting to think how they will plan to implement the Governments proposed extra funding for Primary Care and how they will communicate future decisions to communities in a more transparent and timely manner.
Our timetable for the coming weeks will be to work with the Town Councillors and Patient Group representatives to prepare a “collective response” to the OBC ready to present at the next Social Care Health & Housing Meeting on 17th February, which will be attended by the Health Board and develop and share a new Campaign around those aims.
We hope to give you a more detailed update soon.