Health jobs shake-up as 
staff move outside hospital

Part of the area’s Better Care Together strategy would see specialists in eyecare, respiratory, muscular skeletal, and diabetes moved out of the hospital and into positions closer to people’s homes.

Alex Gaw, chair of NHS North Lancashire Clinincal Commissioning Group – which is reponsible for taking the strategy forward – said his expectation would be for certain jobs to be done outside the hospital environment.

However he said that there was no funding currently in place, and it was as yet undecided who those people would be employed by.

“The idea is that there’s a whole system solution, close to people’s homes, out of the hospital.

“It’s to enable the hospital to do what it does best,” he said.

“With the increasing age of our population, jobs will have to be increased within the health sector significantly so that we can manage it properly.

“The rate at which jobs will change depends on the success of the strategy we put in place.

“We’ll be looking to double run things, so we can carry out checks on things that maybe aren’t working so well, and we’d still have services within the hospital during any transition.

“It gives us the time to get feedback, check, and change the system within the community if necessary.”

Dr Gaw said it would also give general practices and the primary care sector more control and oversight with regards health care locally.

“It’s a general look at what can be pushed out.

“Eyecare, muscular skeletal, respiratory, diabetes; we feel this should all be based in the community.

“We need to focus on keeping people living well, rather than having to respond to issues in hospital.

“We will skill up where training and development is needed to match what’s best for our employees.

“Who employs people is less relevant, that’s not been described in any way, but the expectation for delivery is at least five years.

“We haven’t had any of the resources yet to do this at scale. It will give a quicker, more effective service, with access to the same quality of investigations.

“I think change is needed in this system. Patients have been let down in the past and not just in the hospitals, and I think change is needed in this system.”