This week we are turning our focus to the Performance Committee.
One of the main duties of the Performance Committee is to review the ICS’s progress across the 4 objectives and monitor quality.
It has a vital role in understanding how performance against these objective varies across NW London; this is a vital mechanism in our efforts to reduce inequalities across the communities we support.
The NHS NW London board delegates a number of functions to the committee, including to “minimise clinical and safeguarding risks, maximise patient safety and to secure continuous improvement in quality and patient outcomes.”
Anita Charlesworth CBE, a non-executive director of the ICB board, chairs this committee. She says, “The performance committee has a wide range of responsibilities, which help hold the organisation to account to make sure we are doing all we can to improve health outcomes, reduce inequalities and ensure services are productive across NW London. We are also working hard to understand how we can track our contribution to economic and social development, which is an objective people in the NHS are much less familiar with but is very important in NW London.
“In my day job I am Director of Research and the REAL Centre (Research and Economic Analysis for the Long term) at the Health Foundation. It is exciting to be a non-executive director at the ICS as the big opportunities to deliver better outcomes will come from being able to make changes at the system level.
“I am always proud of the progress we are making across NW London, but I always know there is more to do, people are still waiting too long for care, there are substantial inequalities and we have much more to do to improve productivity across our system.
“The ICS has huge strengths; we are in financial balance, have a clear vision, cohesive team and some very high performing providers, it is great to be a part of exciting journey.”