We know how difficult it can be to understand what each part of our health and social care system does and what the various components do for you as residents.
We are publishing articles telling you about what each of our boards and committee in North West London do. North West London is our context includes the boroughs of Brent, Kensington & Chelsea, Ealing, Hounslow, Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham, Hillingdon and Harrow. We cover a population of over 2.1 million.
But for the first two weeks we will focus on what the overall responsibilities of our two organisations, NHS North West London (NHS NW London) and North West London Integrated Care System (NW London ICS).
First of all it’s important to explain that the statutory (legal) name of NHS NW London is the NHS North West London Integrated Care Board (NHS NW London ICB). NHS NW London is the public facing branding we use, but sometimes NHS NW London ICB is used in legal and other technical documents.
It is the statutory (legal) NHS organisation responsible for developing a plan for meeting the health needs of the population, managing the NHS budget and arranging for the provision of health services in NW London.
We plan and allocate NHS resource to deliver a wide range of services including mental health services, urgent and emergency care, elective hospital services, and community care.
NHS NW London takes on the NHS planning functions previously held by clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and we will take on more planning roles in the future.