Thank you for submitting your questions as part of our annual general meeting for 2019 2020. This year, because of the coronavirus pandemic, we invited people to submit their questions.

AGM questions for 2019 2020

Questions about complaints about GP surgeries:

How many complaints re GP surgeries and services have been received over last 12 months? What percentage of complaints were upheld?  What were the complaints regarding? What happened when complaints were upheld?  How much did dealing with complaints and resolving them, cost the NHS?

Answer: Individual complaints about your GP services are mostly resolved by the GP practice themselves. When someone would like to take that complaint further, these all go directly to NHS England rather than the CCG. We therefore do not have details about individual complaints or what it costs the NHS. 

If the patient has already spoken to their practice and not received a satisfactory response we can offer to forward the complaint to NHS England to investigate. The CCG will be part of investigating a complaint on behalf of the patient particularly if it involves another organisation as well such as for example a hospital, mental health or community health services. More details of complaints received by the CCG in 2019/20 are available in our annual report.

More information about  how to make a complaint is available on our website.

Questions about funding arrangements between Barnsley Council and Barnsley CCG:

What happened to the 1.5 million+ which the Barnsley MBC took off you as announced at last years AGM  and why did they take it off you? What did this mean financially and what ramifications did it have this year? Have they since taken any more money or withheld any money which was earmarked for you? If so how much ,when and why? On who's authority did they do this and who gave them a remit to do so?

Answer: The CCG and Barnsley Council agreed to increase the Section 75 agreement already in place. The CCG Governing Body agreed to a funding transfer as part of its mid-year review process. There were no implications for the CCG as all funding was returned to the CCG in 2019/20 to support increasing demand in hospital services and increased intermediate care provision. 

Questions about advertising the CCG Governing Body meetings:

Why are your monthly meetings no longer announced in the Chronicle as these are PUBLIC  meetings and should be announced in the Barnsley Chronicle? Who decided this should happen and on what authority did that person have to do this?

Answer: Our meetings in public run every two months and we publish the dates on our website and via our social media platforms. We took the decision to stop running an advert in the local newspaper as this was expensive and was not therefore felt to be a good use of taxpayers’ money as there has been no discernible increase in the number of Barnsley residents attending our meetings for a number of years. There is no requirement for CCGs to advertise their meetings in newspapers and many CCGs no longer do so. Before the coronavirus pandemic we were able to hold our meetings in venues across the borough and these would be promoted with the venue and local area. We are though very keen for the Barnsley public to be fully informed and engaged and so we have, for example during the pandemic, made recordings of our full Governing Body meetings available on our website and members of the public are still able to submit questions before each meeting.

Questions about the use of locums in GP practices:

What has been done to redress the amount of locum Dr's used by surgeries? Is there anyone that is changing how much a locum is paid in comparison to a Dr working full time at a surgery? This we know is one of the biggest reasons why we have locums in comparison to full time Dr's. Same as the Dr's v Locums when is the same going to happen with the Nurses with agency nurses. We have Nurses finishing a shift and then returning as an agency nurse on 2/3 times the hourly rate!!

GPs need to have staff in practice to ensure that appointments are available for people to book. In Barnsley, like across the country, being able to use locum staff is vital and they bring valued skills to the teams. This is a decision made by each practice and locum use varies for a number of reasons. There is work taking place to look at this and NHS Digital for example is looking into how wider use of technology may support areas where locum use is prevalent.  The cost of locums varies agency by agency and is often guided by the renumeration a locum wishes to be paid. In circumstances where demand is high and locums in short supply the costs do vary widely.