Agenda and minutes

There were no Declarations of Interest.

The minutes of the meeting held on 19 November 2025 were agreed and signed as a true record.

Further to minute 16 – Prioritisation of NHS Services:

·  The ICB Finance and Performance Committee received a Briefing Note with the Board’s concerns regarding affordability of gluten free items being decommissioned following its meeting in November. The Committee made a decision on the 3^rd December to decommission Gluten Free prescribing and noted the Board’s request for understanding the mitigations around it. A plan including those mitigations will be shared with the Health and Social Care Scrutiny Board (5) in due course.

·  Details of services (non-commercial data) that have already gone through the decommissioning process to be shared with the Board.

Report of the Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, J Richards, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust

The Board received an update from the Trust regarding its performance against the NHS National Oversight Framework. Data for quarter two had been released after publication of the papers for the Board and an updated presentation had been circulated to Members. The Chair thanked the Chair of the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust for their letter providing an update on progress.

The Framework is managed by NHS England to help identify improvement opportunities and uses key measures to assess organisational performance addressing: access to services, e.g. waiting times for A&E and cancer; effectiveness and experience of care; patient safety; people and performance; and finance and productivity and NHS England plans to publish results quarterly. 

The Framework uses some of the measures taken from the National Outcomes Framework but does not take into account Care Quality Commission ratings (under which the Trust had been assessed as good in 2025) and other wider measures. The league table approach and measures are still evolving with metrics for 2026/27 being expanded to include quality.

The Trust was one of 17 to show significant improvement between quarter one and quarter two, having moved up from 132^nd to 96^th out of 134.

It was reported that improvement had been made in areas including: addressing the financial deficit, with substantial financial savings achieved and remaining on plan; waiting times, where targeted improvement plans are underway and overall waiting lists have been significantly reduced; Cancer Faster Diagnosis Standard, which continues to improve; urgent care, where the Trust is the best in the region for ambulance turnaround times with no ‘corridor care’ since 2019; faster response times to patient complaints, 98% responded to in 25 working days; and a dedicated coding team in place to address backlog activity data to NHS England following the complex implementation of the Electronic Patient Record.

Critical areas of focus and next steps include targeting: quality and efficiency including specific waiting times and delays to discharge; outpatient clinics; dispensing of prescriptions on discharge; financial goals; and completing coding following implementation of the new Electronic Patient Records system; current winter pressures (including super flu) and industrial action; shared work with partners on length of stay and discharge; and new developments and investment in Wave 1 Neighbourhood Health. 

The Trust explained some of the complexity of the measures and scoring system in the national framework and provided illustrations of some of the changes in Trust performance between quarter one and quarter two. Examples of specific service improvements that have been made were given. Focussing on doing the right thing, rather than chasing performance measures for their own sake, remains the priority. For example, during the implementation of the Electronic Patient Care Record a reduction of care episodes had been agreed with NHS England which in the short term affected performance ratings, but in the long term will bring significant improvements for patients and taking on community services from CWPT in July 2024 resulted in a negative financial impact which is reflected  ...  view the full minutes text for item 25.

Report of the Scrutiny Co-ordinator

RESOLVED that the Health and Social Care Scrutiny Board (5):

1)  Notes the Work Programme with the following amendments:

·  End of Life Care Strategy and hospices to be added to the work programme for a date to be confirmed

·  A future meeting be arranged at the Hospital to review Trust performance in 2026/27

Any other items of public business which the Chair decides to take as matters of urgency because of the special circumstances involved

  There were no other items of public business.