NHS Scarborough and Ryedale Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has launched an initiative to share their priorities for improving the health and wellbeing of local residents and to seek their views on how best to achieve them.

The CCG has used a range of clinical and financial information, along with patient and stakeholder feedback, to develop a five-year plan which outlines how it will work towards achieving its vision.

The plan is split into the following three main priorities:

• Commission sustainable, high-quality services within the available resources – people, money and buildings; 

•  Create a stronger community system and integrate care across the whole health economy; 

•  Improve health and reduce health inequalities.

Dr Phil Garnett, local GP and clinical chairman for the CCG, said: “We firmly believe that the priorities identified within this plan will help us make great strides towards improving the health and wellbeing of people living in Scarborough and Ryedale. We feel it’s important for people to be aware of these priorities and have the opportunity to suggest ideas for how we can work towards achieving them.”

“The advantage we have as a CCG is that we are made up of local GPs and other healthcare representatives, which means we know what opportunities there are for improvement locally and what challenges we must overcome.

He added: “Financially, the NHS has faced, and will continue to face, significant hurdles. The ageing population will create extra demand for services and, because there is no extra funding available to deal with this, we must look at new ways to develop services in order to create a more streamlined NHS that responds to patients’ needs.

“As you will read in our plan, a key theme is about providing care in the community, closer to people’s homes and making every effort to reduce the need for them to need treatment in hospital.”

Dr Garnett said: “Whilst a key focus of our plan is around providing better care for elderly and frail patients, we also recognise the need to improve services for younger people and supporting them as much as possible to lead a healthy lifestyle. A key part of this is improving local mental health services and support as this is an area that has been somewhat overlooked in the past.”

In order to share the main themes of their plan and give people the opportunity to provide feedback, the CCG is holding a six-week initiative until August 1, which includes a range of ways for people to get involved.

Andy Hudson, CCG lay member and lead for patient involvement, said: “We are really interested to hear from people about how they think we can achieve these priorities and what issues we should consider in doing so. In order to do this we are kicking-off the initiative with a roadshow that will give people the chance to chat with us about our plans and share their views via a survey. We have also produced a document called ‘planning for the future’ which includes a user-friendly description of the three priorities contained within our plan.”

The CCG’s roadshow will visit Malton Market Place on Saturday, from 10am to 4pm.

People will also have the opportunity to hear more about the initiative at the CCG’s annual meeting being held on Thursday, July 17 from 7pm at Scarborough library. The deadline for completing the survey is Friday, August 1.

For more information about the ‘planning for the future’ initiative, Visitscarboroughryedaleccg.nhs.uk for more information about the planning initiative.