Meeting documents

            Meeting: Health Scrutiny Sub-Committee (County Hall, Durham - Committee Room 1a - 10/01/2005 10:00:00 AM)

                  Item: A5 Patient Advice and Liaison Services: Information for Health Scrutiny

Purpose of Report

1. To provide an opportunity for the Patient Advice and Liaison Services in County Durham to raise issues with this Sub-Committee.

Background

2. The Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) is a new service introduced into the National Health Service to represent patients’ interest ‘on the inside’. The Service provides advice and support to patients, families and their carers and also deals with complaints from users of the Health Service. More importantly, it provides an opportunity to drive improvement in services.

3. As the Sub-Committee is aware, each Health Trust has an independent PALS Service. They will deal with issues relating to their particular Trust. The Health Scrutiny Committee provides an opportunity to look at wider trends across services or across the county which might need a more strategic assessment.

4. Arrangements are in hand to seek to feed in views from the PALS service to the Health Scrutiny Sub-Committee.

5. Discussions to date have identified that access to a National Health Service dentist is a general concern raised, in particular, by Durham and Chester-le-Street Primary Care Trust PALS.

6. The opportunity to provide direct feedback from patients to the Health Scrutiny Sub-Committee is a key way in which the Sub-Committee can seek to be in touch with the direct views of patients in the county about the services they receive. This can influence the Sub-Committee’s work programme and the way it views consultation issues.

7. The opportunity for Patient Forums to feed in similar issues is also available.

Recommendation

8. You are recommended to note this information.

Attachments

 PALS - 10th Jan.doc