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Difficult Decisions - Help us to Prioritise and Align Clinical Policies

The six CCGs in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent are seeking views from patients across five service areas.

Altogether the six CCGs commission over 800 different services and treatments, but availability of these varies across the area.

Together they have been spending around £2 million more per week than they receive, and that means some difficult decisions now need to be made.

That is why they are now asking people for their experiences of five different treatments for which access is different across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent.  The CCGs want to understand the real impact these treatments have on people’s lives before deciding how they should be provided across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent in the future.

The five areas are:

Assisted conception

Hearing loss in adults

Removal of excess skin following significant weight loss

Breast augmentation and reconstruction

Male and female sterilisation

The CCGs want to listen to the view of patients to understand the impact these treatments have on their lives and are encouraging people to take part in the engagement activity to share their experiences.

Get involved:

  • Download and read this pdf information (156 KB) paper, which explains the background to the five areas and why these difficult decisions need to be made.
  • Complete the online survey: bit.ly/Difficult_Decisions by 23:59 on Sunday 1 March 2020 - remember to complete as many sub-sections depending on how many services/treatments you want to share your experiences of.
  • Request a paper version of the survey - return using the freepost address on the survey by Sunday 1 March 2020.
  • If you organise a group or are part of a network and would like someone to attend and facilitate a session structured around the survey, please contact us.
  • Local events have been arranged to give people the opportunity to ‘become a commissioner‘ and take part in an interactive workshop of prioritising services and treatments. Events will be repeated across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent and people can book a place by visiting http://bit.ly/BeACommissioner or download a poster of all of the events here.
  • Contact us 
  • A representative from the CCGs will be attending the DeafVive Café on 8 February to seek the views from deaf, hard of hearing, deafened or deafblind people. View the poster with more details pdf here (96 KB) .
  • View and download this pdf Easy Read (1.47 MB) version of the public document

Results of the survey and feedback from the events will be independently analysed.  This will help the CCGs create a short list of viable options for access to these treatments across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, following which a formal consultation will then be held to gather feedback on these options.