Evening of the 25 April

There will be an informal meal the night before the Conference for those wishing to socialise and network.

26 April 2007

8:30 – 9.30

Registration and Breakfast networking session

Each person arriving at the conference will be asked to write the main issues or hot topics they are dealing with at this point in time. We will then try to arrange some issue specific topics for the networking tables over lunch.

9.30 – 9.55

Welcome and introduction to the conference
Professor Rod Griffiths, President of the Faculty of Public Health

Developing ‘Skills for Health’ for public health practitioners who are working in the health services and quality field
Jenny Wright, Deputy Director - Public Health Resource Unit

9.55 – 10.50

The New Commissioning For Health Framework and joint strategic needs assessment

George Leahy, Head of Public Health Development, Department of Health
Renu Bindra, Public Health Development team, Department of Health

11:10 – 12:05

Priority setting and the Portsmouth Scorecard (Chair: Daphne Austin)
 
Presentation: Overview – Daphne Austin, Consultant in Public Health, West Midlands Specialised Services Agency) (10 minutes)
This presentation will set the scene and give an overview of the key issues and some key elements to good practice.

Presentation: The Portsmouth Scorecard – Paul Edmondson, Director of Improving Health and Quality, Portsmouth PCT –Jones (30 minutes)
A key task over the coming years is to develop better tools to support priority setting.  The Department of Health is launching Programme Budgeting and Marginal Analysis this year. However, any programme budgeting tool needs to be complimented by other tools. The Portsmouth Scorecard is one of the tools which has been developed which has the most potential to provide a simple practical means to assess service developments.

Presentation: The Portsmouth Scorecard – Khesh Sidhu, Consultant in Public Health, Sandwell PCT  (10 minutes)
This short presentation will demonstrate how Sandwell is using the Portsmouth Scorecard.

12:05 – 12:35

Accessing evidence from the internet – Ash Paul, Consultant in Public Health, Health Commission Wales 
Ash Paul has become indispensable to the UK Specialised Services Public Health Network and the UK Commissioning Public Health Network because of his ability to find evidence using the internet. He will give a demonstration of his strategies for searching the world wide web.  An opportunity to ask the expert to help! 

14:00 – 16:20

Judicial review, individual funding requests and exceptionality (Chair: Henrietta Ewart)

Presentation: Judicial Review – overview and update (50 minutes)
David Lock,  Mills and Reeves
There can be no doubt that the number of legal challenges has increased in the last 12 months. This presentation will aim to meet the needs of the ‘judicial review novice’ and also those with a more detailed understanding. The presentation will being by providing an overview or refresher of the law relating to resource allocation. This will include clarifying the legal position on ‘no blanket bans’ and postcode variation. The second half will focus on the emerging case law, key learning points and challenges for PCT arising out of the most recent court cases.

Coffee break while session continues

Presentation: The Rugby Experience – Henrietta Ewart, Consultant in Public Health, Warwickshire PCT  (20 minutes)
This will cover the experiences of developing priority setting in Rugby with particular emphasis on how this PCT managed individual funding requests.

Discussion and Question Time:  Supported by a Panel of public health practitioners and a lawyer all of whom have considerable experience in priority setting

Individual funding requests are one of the most difficult aspects of priority setting. This is an opportunity to explore some of the more difficult issues around individual funding requests: for example rule of rescue, definitions of exceptionality can/should we apply the 'primacy of the LDP' approach to 'rare' conditions (how would we define these?) and if not, how do we handle these to make sure they are neither advantaged nor disadvantaged compared to others?.  This is an opportunity for people to bring their questions and experiences in this area of practice.