A victory with the CCGs!
We have achieved a victory this week with the local Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs)! The six CCGs which make the big decisions for Epsom and St Helier's health services are grouped together as South West London Collaborative Commissioning (SWLCC).
For a long time, we have asked that the meetings of all six CCGs, which are open to the public, be better advertised. The SWLCC website did not make it easy to find out when the meeting times are for the CCGs and the individual websites for each CCG were not much better. But after much agitation of the SWLCC Twitter account, we are pleased to report that the SWLCC website home page now has direct links to meeting times for all six CCGs.
All you have to do now to find out when the meetings are on is click here and scroll down.
We thank SWLCC for making this small but important change to the website.
It is so important that information about meeting times is easy to find and that people are aware of the role of CCGs in our health system.
Our next request is for at least half the meetings of the CCGs be held in the evenings to allow more people to attend. At present, meetings are generally held in office hours which makes it impossible for many working people to attend. If the CCGs could look at addressing this issue in the interests of transparency, that would be much appreciated.
Additionally, we have been disappointed but not entirely surprised that local MPs have not been vocal on issues of transparency with CCGs. We urge all MPs to attend CCG meetings whenever possible, or to send representatives to ask questions on their behalf when they cannot make it because of other commitments. This is where the big decisions are being made about Epsom and St Helier Hospitals so it is vital they are well informed and challenge CCGs on how our money is spent.
Image by Piotr Siedlecki
