Honour for GP who led clinical care transition
A RUNCORN family doctor who steered the borough’s health service through one of its biggest overhauls in history has been awarded the MBE.
Dr Cliff Richards was granted the title in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
Congratulations have inundated his inbox and a senior civil servant at the Department Of Health has written to him to say he was ‘delighted’ with his MBE.
The award was for services to health including his role as chairman for the Cheshire And Merseyside Urgent And Emergency Care Network.
A veteran of general practice of more than 30 years, Dr Richards is no longer treating patients face-to-face, but was previously based at Brookvale Practice, part of Hallwood Health Centre, and he said he was proud his former base was recently awarded a ‘outstanding’ grading by the Care Quality Commission, placing it among the top 3% performing surgeries in the country.
Dr Richards, who lives in Runcorn, was at the helm when the Government brought in sweeping changes to the health service, when it dismantled the previous primary care trust model, replacing them with clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) – a move that prompted fears that the Government was privatising the NHS, as CCGs were given control over a big chunk of the borough’s health budget.
He was appointed Hal- ton CCG chairman, and said that the team handling the transition focused on creating an ‘open’ service aimed at what they would want if they were patients and ‘getting the values right’.
Looking back to the transition to the CCG model, he said: “There was a notion that it was something to do with privatising the NHS.
“We wanted to make quite clear that while NHS services are more complex than it seems, there was absolutely no agenda to do with privatising the NHS.
“We wanted to use public money wherever possible in the NHS family to get the best deal.”
Asked about how he would celebrate, he said: “I shared a bottle of champagne on Saturday night. It could be potentially a few months before I go down to Buckingham Palace.
“The focus is around a visit to the palace and a grand day out.”