The Royal Berkshire Hospital Trust has been awarded seed money from the Government to plan its recreation. Now it is up to you to say what you think a hospital should be like in th 21st Century and how it should fit into Reading and Western Berkshire. Please access the trust's consulation site and take their survey. Survey open through September.

The three local authorities across Berkshire West, Wokingham, Reading, West Berkshire are jointly working on a new Health and Wellbeing strategy. They are seeking your input - please take this survey and encourage others to do so.

The government has published its Obesity Strategy . The strategy includes measures to control promotion of foods high in fats, sugar and salt - controlling TV advertisements to be after 9pm, buy one get one free and display at checkout. Also revise labelling, including providing calorie totals on restaurant meals and on sales of alcohol. However, some maintain that diets low in carbohydrates and relatively high in fats promote weight loss. There are no further laws proposed to tax foods high in fats, salt and sugar, although the Sugary Drinks Tax has been very successful in encouraging manufacturers to reformulate their products with less sugar. In concert, Public Health England has kicked off a Better Health campaign.

Reading's ACRE (Alliance for Cohesion and Racial Equality), Utulivu and other organisations have organised the 2020 Health Equalities Annual Conference online (Zoom) under the title "Potentialising Community Assets in Filling the Gaps for Sustainable Health Equity (All for our wellbeing) on Friday, 31st July from 11am to 2pm. Please join via the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7674792806?pwd=N1pKRFZram9MNnhrdkRNNmFjVVAxdz09 or in the Zoom app Meeting ID: 767479 2806 Password: 2804 Please see also the attached poster

The review looked at 3 treatments which have caused harm and which only slowly and reluctantly been recognised as such. These are: hormonal pregnancy tests, the anti-convulsant drug Sodium Valproate when given in pregnancy, and the use of polypropylene mesh for pelvic repairs. In all cases serious harm and much suffering resulted and was only slowly recognised. The review looks at the experiences of patients, the reasons for the delayed recognition of the harm and makes 9 recommendations to remedy the situation. Among these is the appointment of an independent Patient Safety Commissioner, the creation of better registries of use of medicines and medical devices, improvements in the law on medical devices and the creation of a Redress Agency. A reading of at least the Introduction and summary of Overarching Themes is highly recommended. You can hear a podcast from the Health Service Journal on why the Government will bury the Cumberlege review here .

The annual national GP patient survey - representing patients' views of their GP practices - has just been published for 2020. This is based on data taken near the start of the year. The scoring is based on patients' classification of various features of the services. Because there is no natural absolute scale for these figures we have chosen to use the practice's rank among all practices in England. For each practice and each measure the result is given like this: Needs met at last general practice appointment - Yes, definitely + Yes, to some extent 0.9388 (4033 of 6732) 40.09% The column heading summarises the question and the choice of responses for which a score is given. The first figure (0.9388 in this case) is the proportion of respondents at that practice choosing one of those responses - in this case agreeing that their needs were either definitely or to some extent met. The entry in parentheses shows the rank of this practice among all practices for which this measure can be obtained - in this case the practice is the 4033rd from the top - even though its score of 0.9388 seems high this is misleading as 4032 practices out of 6732 have a higher (or equal) score. The percentage then expresses this ranking - 100% for the top score and 0% for the bottom score - and in this case being more than half way down the rank, the score is less than 50%. Sometimes there is no entry - there may not have been enough answers to this particular question from the respondents. We should not forget that the patient responses vary with demography, personal characteristics, funding, prevalence of disease which may not be attributes of the practice. Nevertheless, the gross differences can be taken as representations of patients' views.

The Berkshire West Primary Care Committee meets virtually from 1pm to 4pm on Wednesday 8th July. Practice performance (QOF) and the renewal of the Walk-In Centre contract are among the topics to be discussed. The meeting is being help over the Microsoft Teams application. Members of the public who wish to attend, are able to dial in to listen using these details: +44 20 3321 5208. Conference ID: 503 447 053#. To enable members of the public attending the opportunity to put forward an agenda related question to PCCC committee members, all questions that have been submitted in advance of the meeting will not be discussed. The agenda includes an allotted time slot for public questions, and will be limited to one question per person. This will be subject to time available on the day and at the discretion of the Chair. To submit a question pleases email: bwccg.bwprimarycare@nhs.net or telephone 0118 982 2922. Please note: questions must relate to the agenda and are limited to a maximum of three per person.

Patients at Milman Road Health Centre and at Kennet Surgery have been made aware of a plan to merge the two practices. The letter to patients assures them that there will be no reduction in appointments available. It is possible, though, that the branch surgery at Christchurch Road might be discontinued at some time with patients given a choice as to where to transfer.

Reading borough is developing a local plan to control outbreaks of Covid-19. The plan can be inspected here .

The CCG held its 9th June meeting by multi-way telephone call. The meeting papers are below - featuring some details on the measures taken for COVID-19 and the arrangements for paying for them.