HEALTH MATTERS

DR Mike Clark, clinical lead for service review consultation at NHS Eastern Cheshire CCG, and GP with High Street Surgery, Macclesfield REGULAR readers of this column will know that the CCG’s job is to plan and buy health services.

This work involves ensuring that services are safe, affordable and achieve the best possible results for patients.

Managing a healthcare system for 204,000 people is challenging at the best of times but never more so than in the current financial climate when the gap between the funding we get and what we need to spend to carry on as we are is getting ever bigger.

To put things in context, the CCG is expecting to record a deficit of £12.4m in 2016-17 despite being on course to make efficiency savings of £6.2m from new ways of working such as:

GPs providing a wider range of services to keep people out of hospital

Stopping funding the prescribing of over-thecounter medicines for common ailments

Reducing stockpiling of medicines in people’s homes by switching responsibility for the ordering of repeat prescriptions from pharmacies to patients.

In addition, we recently carried out a 90-day consultation on proposals to reduce the amount we spend on procedures of lower clinical priority.

The consultation asked people for their views on changes to the following services: Cosmetic procedures Treatments for some skin conditions

Ear, nose and throat procedures

Fertility and sterilisation treatments

Surgery for injuries and conditions affecting bones, joints, ligaments, tendons, muscles and nerves

Services relating to the