NHS West Sussex Health & wellbeing for life

All Primary Care Trusts are measured on how they use and manage finances and resources to make sure local people are getting value for money.

NHS West Sussex undergoes an Annual Health Check to ensure that everyone in West Sussex is getting high-quality, sustainable and accessible health services.

The report, published by the Care Quality Commission, allows us to look at how well we are performing and identifies areas where improvements can be made. 

We are assessed annually on how effectively we manage and provide health services compared to national standards in areas including safety, cleanliness and waiting times.

For 2008-09 we were required to submit two reports for the Annual Healthcheck – one for our commissioning arm, and one for West Sussex Health, our provider arm:

We were also asked to submit a Mid Term Declaration covering the period of 1 April to 31 October 2009. This is part of the process of the new registration system for care providers that came in on 1 April 2010:

The Annual Health Check was replaced by the Registration of Provider Services in April 2010.

The new Care Quality Commission regulations ensure people can expect services to meet essential standards of quality and safety that respect their dignity and protect their rights.

To register, providers must show they meet these standards across all the services they offer.

The system is focused on outcomes, rather than processes, and places the views of people who use services at the centre.

For more on the scheme, visit the Care Quality Commission's registration pages.

All health and adult social care providers will be required to be registered with the Care Quality Commission if they provide regulated activities.

But registration isn't just about the initial application for registration. The CQC will:

• Continuously monitor compliance with essential standards as part of a new more dynamic, responsive and robust system of regulation.
• Seek information from patients and public representative groups, and from organisations such as other regulators and the National Patient Safety Agency.

Registration came into force on 1 April 2010 for NHS trusts, including Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) as providers, and will be introduced on 1 October 2010 for adult social care and independent healthcare providers.

NHS West Sussex is monitored by the Audit Commission every year on our use of finances and how well we are providing value for money.

We have to demonstrate efficiency, effectiveness and economy in our use of resources.

Read our Publications section for more details of NHS West Sussex's annual reports and accounts.

The NHS West Sussex Board receives and discusses a series of monthly performance reports. These include:

• A summary of our performance against all targets.
• A report that focuses on areas where actions are needed to bring performance back on track.
• A summary of our performance against our Vital Signs and the Annual Health Check.
• A report detailing performance against contracts (acute, primary care, mental health, community, continuing care, out of hours).
• The Vital Signs monitoring tool measures how we are performing against national and local delivery targets.
• The Annual Health Check is the way we, and other NHS organisations, are rated for delivery and quality of services (whether provider or commissioner).

Visit our Board meetings page.

View our performance reports, which are presented to the NHS West Sussex Board.

Each year PCTs are assessed against 'Vital Signs' performance indicators set by the Department of Health.

You can download a copy of our latest report from the Department of Health below.