Healthcare in Staffordshire was the responsibility of six clinical commissioning groups until July 2022, covering Stafford & Surrounds, North Staffordshire, South East Staffordshire and Seisdon Peninsula, East Staffordshire, Cannock Chase, and Stoke-on-Trent.
In 2015, a deficit of more than £200 million was forecast for the county within the next three years.
History
From 1947 to 1974 NHS services in Staffordshire were managed by the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board. In 1974 the boards were abolished and replaced by regional health authorities. Staffordshire still came under the Birmingham RHA. Regions were reorganised in 1996 and Staffordshire came under the West Midlands RHA. From 1974 there was an area health authority covering the county. There were three district health authorities, covering South-East Staffordshire, Mid-Staffordshire and North Staffordshire. In 1993 Mid-Staffordshire was merged into South Staffordshire. Four primary care trusts established in the county in 2002: Newcastle-under-Lyme PCT, Staffordshire Moorlands PCT, Stoke-on-Trent PCT and South Staffordshire PCT. Newcastle-under-Lyme and Staffordshire Moorlands were merged into North Staffordshire PCT in 2006. They were managed by the Shropshire and Staffordshire Strategic Health Authority which was merged into NHS West Midlands in 2006.
Management consultancy KPMG produced a report on the local health economy in March 2015 for the NHS Trust Development Authority, NHS England and Monitor which criticised the lack of collaboration between different organisations in the county. They said the health system was in “perpetual crisis mode” with a lack of clinical leaders and a managerially focused leadership with “many examples of silo working”. They reported that clinical commissioning groups in the county did not collaborate and their plans, including financial contracts, were not aligned with each other or providers.
In 2016 the CCGs of Stafford and Surrounds, Cannock Chase, and South East Staffordshire and Seisdon Peninsula were proposing a virtual merger, in which all operational functions would be combined, leaving only the governing bodies separate.
Sustainability and transformation plan
Staffordshire formed a sustainability and transformation plan area in March 2016 with John MacDonald, the Chair of University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust as its leader Burton Hospital In 2017 it was announced that A&E and Stafford A&E were likely to be downgraded, and the community hospitals at Longton and Cheadle and Haywood Hospital would lose 167 hospital beds. A Care Quality Commission visit to Stoke found that in the city there was no shared vision for services or evidence of whole system strategic planning and commissioning. Many older people had to stay excessively long in hospital before they could be moved into care. It criticised proposals to close community beds without consulting social care leaders about the impact.
Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent started using a new integrated care record, One Health and Care, in May 2021. This is based on Graphnet’s CareCentric technology. The records for 1.1 million residents stretch across 147 GP practices, two acute trusts, one combined community and mental health trust, one mental health trust, two councils, and six clinical commissioning groups.
Commissioning
North Staffordshire Clinical Commissioning Group decided that from October 2015 they would no longer pay for hearing aids for people with mild hearing loss or some people with moderate hearing loss. This would save around £200,000 a year. The decision was accepted by Staffordshire County Council's health scrutiny committee in June 2015. It was expected that the other CCGs in the county would adopt a similar policy but the process was suspended in February 2016 after the collapse of a similar contract in Cambridgeshire.
The CCGs in Stoke-on-Trent, North Staffordshire, East Staffordshire, Stafford & Surrounds, Cannock Chase and South East Staffordshire and Seisdon Peninsula agreed to share an accountable officer in August 2017.
The North Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent clinical commissioning groups expected a deficit of £27 million in 2018–19. The CCGs in Cannock Chase, South East Staffordshire and Seisdon Peninsula, and Stafford and Surrounds forecast a combined deficit of £29 million. At the same time the University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust expected a deficit of £40 million, and there were financial disputes between the trust and the CCGs. Both CCGs were rated inadequate by the Care Quality Commission in 2019.