A Picture of Health - letter to the Editor

From: Gill Galliano, Chief Executive, Lewisham Primary Care Trust to News Shopper 27th February 2008
Your reader...takes us to task for wasting "time, money and resources on what are clearly half thought-out plans."

A Picture of Health is a vital consultation about NHS services for more than a million residents of Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich and Lewisham.

I'm pleased [the reader] took the opportunity to return a questionnaire - because we do want to know what people think before we make final recommendations.

This is why we printed more than 700,000 booklets. The cost was the equivalent of one second class postage stamp for every resident in the four boroughs - 24p.

Response levels to the consultation are so far very positive.

I am concerned she found the document difficult to understand. I can assure her we are working hard to explain the proposals fully to everyone.

For instance, our full page adverts in the local media explain the options in an at-a-glance style.

and our response.......

The Chief Executive of Lewisham PCT states (letters, 27th February) that the cost of each of the 700,000 A Picture of Health booklets is 24p. Funny that. When I was at the Bexleyheath roadshow I was told by another PCT employee that the cost was 46p each.

The booklets were not personalised and / or delivered by Royal Mail, rather a private delivery company was used. In the words of this same employee, "When you get down to the person who is actually delivering the booklets, some of the individuals are bound to be less than thorough in their delivery methods." I can't argue with that. Several thousand extra booklets had to be redelivered as there were parts of Orpington and Petts Wood that were inexplicably not delivered to first time around. Despite deliveries supposedly being completed in January, I have yet to receive my booklet and at the roadshow I was told by one lady that none of her extended family (five separate addresses) had received theirs either. Only 250 individuals attended the Bexleyheath roadshow (which was advertised in the booklet) which represents only about 0.1% of the population locally. If this is mirrored in the number of responses to the consultation questionnaire then the Chief Executive's comment that "response levels...are so far very positive" begin to appear to be very wide of the mark.
John Hemming-Clark