About Darlington Primary Care Trust (PCT)

NHS Darlington is one of 12 PCTs which are managed by NHS Northeast – the Strategic Health Authority for the North East.

Working in partnership with NHS County Durham, NHS Darlington is responsible for commissioning (planning and buying) health services on behalf of around 600,000 people living in County Durham and Darlington.

Darlington has a population of around 98,600 living in a compact area of 76.2 square miles.

Across County Durham and Darlington we serve a diverse community of around 600,000 people that includes both disadvantaged and affluent areas, and rural communities.

We employ approximately 3,000 staff and had an annual budget of £1.1 billion in 2009/10 to spend on services for local people in County Durham and Darlington.

Our role is to commission healthcare that will improve health outcomes, reduce health inequalities and ensure fair and equitable access to high quality, safe, patient-centred services.

What Do We Do?

As from 1st November 2009, NHS County Durham and NHS Darlington established an Integrated Business Board to strengthen the provision of health services across their areas by commissioning health services jointly for the populations of County Durham and Darlington.

The NHS County Durham and Darlington Integrated Business Board is supported by a single management team led by a Joint Chief Executive. The chairs and some non executive members of NHS County Durham and NHS Darlington represent their localities on the integrated business board.

These changes replace the previous arrangement though which NHS Darlington delegated all aspects of commissioning to NHS County Durham.

This year, a public health delivery unit was established within a provider organisation and health improvement delivery services are commissioned by NHS County Durham and Darlington on behalf of County Durham and Darlington residents.

NHS County Durham and Darlington commission (purchase) healthcare services to meet the healthcare needs of the population. Our commissioning role covers the type, quality and quantity of services which we ‘buy’ from hospitals, GP practices, dentists, community care (for example district nurses and health visitors etc.) and the private sector.

We have carried out our responsibility to develop and manage primary care provision within County Durham and Darlington, including services provided by GP practices, dental practices, pharmacies and ophthalmic practices. We also commissioned where necessary services from practices and other organisations outside of County Durham and Darlington to provide healthcare for people living in these areas.

Provision of all community based healthcare services is sourced from County Durham and Darlington Community Services which is hosted by NHS Darlington. During 2009/10, our community health services became an ‘arms length’ organisation in its own right. County Durham and Darlington Community Services now accounts to the NHS Darlington Board, and runs as an independent provider led by a Chief Operating Officer.

NHS County Durham and NHS Darlington boards retain their statutory accountability for effective commissioning and service provision for their respective populations.

Our vision and goals

The vision of NHS Darlington is to deliver excellence today for a healthier tomorrow and our mission is to improve the health status of our population.

We will do this through our four strategic objectives:

giving children a better start in life
helping to keep our public healthy
ensuring high quality care at the most appropriate time and place
helping people get the most out of later life

Supporting these four objectives are eleven goals. These are to:

reduce teenage conception
increase breastfeeding
improve emotional wellbeing in children
reduce smoking
reduce alcohol misuse
reduce obesity
better self-management of long term conditions
early detection and intervention
improve urgent care services
reduce illness in the elderly
enable preferred place of death

Our values

we ensure that patient safety always comes first
we fully engage patients, carers and the public in order to commission services that people value
we fully engage clinicians to ensure that they shape the way health services are delivered
we make people aware of a choice of services which are designed around the needs of patients
we shift the balance from treatment to prevention to reduce health inequalities

Achieving health outcomes

The Department of Health has set ambitious competencies for primary care trusts to meet in commissioning health services for their communities. Achieving these competencies is part of delivering World Class Commissioning, a national drive to deliver a more strategic and long-term approach to commissioning services, with a clear focus on delivering improved health outcomes.

Working in partnership with NHS County Durham, NHS Darlington is committed to the principles of World Class Commissioning and has worked hard to meet the challenge that has been set. We have produced a series of documents as part of the Department of Health’s assurance process, including a five year strategic plan.

The assurance process indicated areas where NHS Darlington and NHS County Durham needed to strengthen our performance in commissioning. Our joint challenge is now to progress this work.

We have has highlighted the following 10 key health outcomes, which we will work to deliver over the next four years:

reducing teenage pregnancy - reduce teenage pregnancies by 180 in each locality in the next 3 years.
breastfeeding - increase the breastfeeding rates by 26.9% in County Durham and 18.4% in Darlington.
stop smoking – we aim to have more than 1,000 people quitting smoking by 2013
reducing hospital admissions caused by alcohol - limit the increase is hospital admissions due to alcohol related harm to 606 per 100,000 in County Durham and 433 per 100,000 in Darlington. There were 15,500 hospital admissions due to alcohol in 2008/09.
reduce health inequalities – our aim is to close the gap in health inequalities by 0.4 years by 2013.
reducing deaths from cardiovascular disease (CVD) - reduce death from cardiovascular disease (CVD) by 45 per100,000 in County Durham and 50.1 per 100,000 in Darlington. In 2008/09 there were 2,106 deaths from CVD.
reducing deaths from cancer – we aim to reduce cancer deaths in the area by 230 patients a year by 2013.
reducing suicide - reduce suicide and injury rates by 1.2 per 100,000 in County Durham and 1.4 per 100,000 in Darlington. There were 2,825 incidents of self injury in 2008/09 across County Durham and Darlington, costing £3 million.
life expectancy – by 2013 we want to have added 1.5 years to life expectancy.
end of life care - allow 3% more people in County Durham and 1.4% in Darlington to have the choice to die at home.

Although we recognise that these are ambitious targets, they demonstrate our level of commitment to improve the health and well-being of everyone within our population.

By delivering our vision and strategic objectives for health in NHS County Durham and Darlington, we will support delivery of the NHS North East vision “Passionate about health”:

No barriers to health and well being
No avoidable deaths, injury or illness
No avoidable suffering or pain
No helplessness
No unnecessary waiting or delays
No waste
No inequality