The Quality and Performance Report, which was issued yesterday, sets key targets across a range of Health Department services.
During a Scrutiny panel hearing in June, director general for health Caroline Landon and group medical director Rob Sainsbury (right) said they were reluctant to release the performance report as they feared that media reporting of the figures could be ‘sensationalised’ and deter people from accessing health services. Chief Minister John Le Fondré subsequently said that, in principle, reports of this nature should be released and the document’s publication date was eventually brought forward following numerous media requests.
The report was presented to senior health officials, including Health Minister Richard Renouf, at a board meeting last week and was released publicly yesterday.
Mr Sainsbury said that, across the department, a total of 17 performance indicators had been met, designating these targets as ‘green’. A further three targets were categorised as amber, while 16 were marked as red, or areas for improvement.
A significant proportion of the ‘red’ indicators were attributed, at least partly, to the onset of the pandemic and the impact it had on departments and staffing levels.
Deputy Renouf said the report would become a ‘regular item’ on the agenda for the board, which would provide ‘visible leadership to inform and create a greater understanding of the services provided by HCS’.
The report reveals that the proportion of people waiting more than 18 weeks for appointments with Jersey Talking Therapies is more than eight times higher than the 5% target rate – sitting at 43.4% in June. However, this figure has steadily come down since June last year.
Referrals received by the Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service increased by 59% from last year, with 471 made up to June this year. Seven patients under the age of 18 were admitted to Orchard House – the referral clinic for adults. The target figure for this is zero.
The number of adult-mental-health-outpatient referrals has been 1,236 since the start of 2021, which represents a drop of 19% on the previous year.
‘I said at the first meeting of this board that our role was to hold the department to account for its ambition to create a healthy island with safe, high-quality, affordable care that is accessible when and where our service users need it,’ Deputy Renouf added.
The report shows that significant improvements have been made in the past 12 months in areas such as child dental work – specifically tooth extractions – average waiting times in the Emergency Department, length of stay for adult mental-health services and average length of stay within the maternity ward.
Significant interest was generated in the report following comments made by Ms Landon and Mr Sainsbury during a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee.
Ms Landon said: ‘PAC can be quite a stressful environment. Rob and I and the words we used were clumsy and ill-chosen.’
She added that the intention had always been to release the report eventually, and that its publication was a step towards the ‘openness we are trying to achieve’.
The report also says that a number of reviews are to be carried out to tackle the pressure points within the departments and ‘ensure that a greater number of targets are hit’.
Deputy Renouf added: ‘With this report, we are taking a significant step forward. For the first time in Jersey, Islanders can see how we monitor quality and performance across HCS, where the stresses and strains are, and how we plan to overcome difficulties and improve performance. HCS is a large, complex organisation with a very wide scope of services so, at any one time, like any large organisation, parts of it will come under pressure and will struggle to maintain the high standards used to monitor quality and performance. Some indicators will show as amber or red. That need not create alarm but shows that we openly and transparently highlight the pressures faced by those services.’
