In February and March, we embarked on a two-month period of engagement so that we could understand people’s views and opinions about the current provision of emergency care and our proposals for the future.
This included:
• Writing to our 65,000 public members and inviting them to briefing sessions held across Northumberland and North Tyneside.
• Meeting local authority members, overview and scrutiny committees, local involvement networks (LINks) and other key local groups.
As we wanted to know what members of the public felt about our proposals, we also commissioned independent research which involved 20 focus groups and a face-to-face survey of 2,000 people across Northumberland and North Tyneside.
This helped us to understand people’s needs and priorities and how these varied between different communities. It also allowed us to evaluate people’s responses to the proposals and understand what they saw as the positives and negatives.
A three-month period of public consultation was launched by our commissioners NHS North of Tyne to seek comments from people about our proposals.
NHS North of Tyne works across three primary care organisations – Northumberland Care Trust, North Tyneside Primary Care Trust (PCT) and Newcastle PCT – and is responsible for making sure that people receive the health care they need when they become ill, have an accident or to help them stay healthy.
The consultation ran until Tuesday, July 28. During this time, consultation documents were readily available. Leaflets were sent to all households in Northumberland and North Tyneside and there was a programme of public meetings and meetings with a range of local groups, including local authorities, parish councils and community and voluntary sector groups across Northumberland, North Tyneside and Newcastle.
The outcome of the public consultation will be discussed at a meeting of the commissioning board which will take place on Thursday 20th August at 3.00pm at the White Swan Centre, Killingworth. Members of the public are welcome to attend. For more infomation please visits www.northoftyne.nhs.uk