28 May 2015

Council summons CCG to explain rationing NHS hearing care

Staffordshire County Council Summons Local NHS Commissioners to Explain Controversial Decision to Limit Acces to Hearing Aids

In March this year North Staffordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) announced that it would proceed with its controversial proposal to restrict access to NHS hearing aids for people with mild to moderate hearing loss first announced in 2014. This is a contrary decision since all the evidence shows that early intervention leads to better outcomes and it has been widely criticised not least by patient groups.  Although the CCG subsequently modified its proposal, including asking patients with moderate hearing loss to fill in a form to determine eligibility for NHS hearing care, the main criticism still stands.

The CCG will now have to explain the decision to the Council’s Healthy Staffordshire Select Committee on 8 June having had its initial proposal voted down last year.

The NCHA welcomes the Council’s decision to challenge the CCG to explain its decision to proceed with unjustified rationing of NHS hearing care. The reasoning behind the decision remains perplexing, not least because the CCG has not released its equality impact assessment or made clear how much money it believes it will save by penalising people with mild to moderate hearing loss.

Jakob Stenkvist, Policy Officer at the NCHA said: “We would like to see the CCG publish all versions of its scoring of the hearing service, its economic analysis and the equality impact assessment so that experts can review these documents and assess whether the CCG has met its obligations to local patients and taxpayers. All commissioners must work together to make data transparent and put patient outcomes at the heart of local decision making. We do not believe this has been the case in North Staffs. Perhaps most surprising is how the CCG’s decision remains at odds with NHS England’s Five Year Forward View, the Department of Health and NHS England’sAction Plan on Hearing Loss and Monitor’s review of hearing services”

The Stoke Sentinel reports that the meeting will take place 8 June.