NHS board meetings open to the public

Health chiefs in the Black Country are throwing open their board meetings to the public in a move to make the service more transparent.

NHS Walsall Community Health provides services such as district nursing, chiropody and physiotherapy. And the body, which is an arm of the health authority or primary care trust, is set to become a health trust in it own right next year.

The first open meeting will take place on Friday at 9.30am in Training Room 1, at Beechdale Community Centre, Stephenson Square. NHS Walsall spokesman Martin Turner said Walsall Community Health is a division of the borough’s health trust and was launched in April 2008.

It is administered from offices in Lichfield Street in Walsall town centre. It is expected to become an entirely separate and independently run organisation in the future.

“Walsall Community Health has a semi-statutory status, and as part of the process, a series of meetings have to be held in public. Technically it is a sub-committee of the main health authority board. In time, it will become its own trust,” Mr Turner said.

He said NHS Walsall buys services such as district nursing, chiropody and physiotherapy from community health and there were changes afoot in the structure of commissioning of some health services.

Walsall Community Health is based in offices which were the home of the former Walsall Health Authority which is now known as NHS Walsall or the primary care trust. NHS Walsall Community Health managing director Terry Mingay said: “It’s our ambition to get better in every aspect of the way we work. We are holding our board meetings in public to help us become established as an organisation which is completely transparent.”

NHS Walsall has a £400 million annual budget to provide a range of hospital and community-based medical services.