STP update
Liverpool has become the latest local authority to reject the Merseyside and Cheshire Sustainability and Transformation Plan. This is the document that has been put together in secret and details how local health services will deliver nearly £1bn in cuts.
Greens have been campaigning against the STPs for months. Today Tom Crone attended a demonstration ahead of the Liverpool Health and Wellbeing Board, which was to vote on whether to adopt the plan, as well as the meeting where thankfully it was voted to reject the damaging plans.
Here are the questions we had submitted to that meeting. We will update when we get full answers:
Will the Health and Wellbeing Board ensure that the implementation of the Healthy Liverpool initiative and Sustainability and Transformation Plans do not result in a compromise in health care for the population of Merseyside and Cheshire? Will the Board agree that funding levels need to be sufficient to ensure that health and social care needs are met in future years?
As much of the Local Delivery System plans appear to be still undecided, i.e. what is in the plan is still flexible and a work in progress, how can we be sure we are awarding contracts to the right organisations now, when the outlook might change? What are the lock in times for these contracts?
It makes sense to emphasise prevention and healthy living to keep people as well as possible, but that will takes years before it manifests in the system and can be reflected in real terms. How long can people currently in the system be adequately supported by this revised provision of services?
If a service is outsourced to a private organisation, what happens if that fails? Will another external provider automatically be sourced, or will there be the option to bring the service back ‘in house’ and publicly funded?
What form will public engagement take?
Given how important the development of STPs is to the entire nation’s health and wellbeing, what is happening at local and national level to get the mainstream media to take this up as a hugely important piece of public information?
What are the PFI obligations within our footprint? How many services have been reduced to sustain those payment obligations?
Accepting that any business or service should look to review it’s practises regularly and improve efficiency, how much have the proposals within this plan been driven specifically by the government’s cuts to funding?