[Report 1972] / Medical Officer of Health, Gloucestershire County Council.

  • Gloucestershire (England). County Council. n 50061360.
Date:
1972
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1972] / Medical Officer of Health, Gloucestershire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Council represents the voice of the consumer in the planning and administration of the local health services, and the members will have certain rights, such as entry into hospitals and direct access to the senior officers of the AHA. Each AHA will consist of one or more health districts, and the size of a district is largely determined by the catchment area of a district general hospital. There are therefore likely to be two health districts in the new Gloucestershire, one based on the catchment area of the Gloucester, Stroud and the Forest group of hospitals, and the other based on the Cheltenham group. In each health district there will be a District Medical Committee consisting of equal numbers of hospital consultants and general practitioners, elected by their colleagues. There will be no statutory health authority at district level, but the primary planning unit will be a District Management Team consisting of a consultant and a general practitioner nominated by the District Medical Committee and four officers appointed by the AHA, namely, an admin- istrator, a community physician, a finance officer and a nursing officer. These six people will be jointly responsible to the AHA for formulating plans for the health services in the district and for coordinating the implementation of the plans which are subsequently approved by the AHA and RHA. All decisions of the District Management Team must be by consensus and so every member of the Team has, in effect, a veto. Any serious disagreement will be reported to the AHA for resolution. Each District Management Team will be advised by a number of health-care planning teams on the needs of certain groups such as the elderly and the mentally handicapped. These health-care planning teams will be multi-disciplinary and their composition will vary with the task they have to perform, but will probably always include doctors and nurses from hospital and from the community, and representatives of local authority services, particularly social services. The reorganised National Health Service is to come formally into existence on 1st April, 1974, when the RHAs and AHAs take over responsibility from the present statutory bodies. The RHAs and AHAs will probably be appointed in “ shadow ” form in the autumn of 1973. In order to carry out as much as possible of the necessary preparatory work, Joint Liaison Committees (JLCs) have been established for each new area and each new region. It was recommended that the Area JLC should consist of two representatives from each of the statutory health authorities who are responsible for services in the present area, together with two representatives from the appropriate Regional Hospital Board. In addition to the Board there are, in Gloucestershire, eight health authorities concerned (4 Hospital Management Committees, 3 Local Authorities and 1 Executive Council). Each of these authorities agreed to nominate one member and one officer to the Gloucestershire Area JLC, the member in most cases being the Chair- man of the Committee or Council concerned, and the officer being the appropriate Chief Officer. The late Mrs. Bathurst was appointed Chairman when the Committee first met in August, and I had the honour to succeed her. The Secretary is Mr. J. W. Fitzpatrick, Group Secretary of the Cheltenham Group of Hospitals, and the Deputy Secretary is Mr. E. T. C. Chell, Clerk to the Gloucester City and County Executive Council. Initially, the County Council was also represented on the Avon JLC by one member and one officer. The health authorities concerned in Avon are so numerous, however, that the JLC was too large to function efficiently. The Committee therefore decided that each authority should have only one representative and that this should in each case be an officer. The Gloucestershire and Avon JLCs have each established a number of Working Parties consisting of officers from each of the authorities concerned. The Regional JLC, which consists of three representatives from each Area JLC, has also set up Working Parties. Each authority is responsible for keeping its staff informed of all recom- mendations of the JLC which are likely to affect them, and a Joint Consultative Group consisting of repre- sentatives of staff associations and trade unions has been established by the Gloucestershire JLC. The Secretaries of the JLCs also publish information sheets from time to time. A great deal of preparatory work in collecting information and identifying problems has already been accomplished, and the shadow AHAs and RHAs will look to their JLCs for information and guidance. It should be noted, however, that the JLCs are advisory bodies. They have no power to pre-empt decisions and they will cease to exist when the new health authorities are established in shadow form. The future is challenging in that, for the first time in this country, a single authority will be respon- sible for planning and coordinating the personal health services of an area. By virtue of their membership of the health-care planning teams and of the District Management Teams, clinicians will play a major