From 1947 to 1965 NHS services in Essex were managed by the East Anglian for Saffron Walden and North-East Metropolitan (the rest of the county) regional hospital boards.
Suffolk and North East Essex formed a sustainability and transformation plan area in March 2016 with Nick Hulme, the Chief Executive of Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust, as its leader.
[3] Hertfordshire and West Essex is to become a shadow integrated care system, covering one and a half million people with effect from April 2020.
[4] Castle Point and Rochford, Southend and Thurrock clinical commissioning groups were instructed by NHS England to pool functions and create a single plan in April 2017.
Essex CCGs were proposing restricted access to specialist fertility services, and non-urgent elective surgery for patients who were obese or smoked.
For the sake of saving a few pounds the CCG is taking the risk of a rise in unwanted pregnancies and all that means for individuals and families and they should seriously consider reversing this decision.’[8] North East Essex CCG decided in May 2015 to stop providing IVF, vasectomies or female sterilisation to people other than those with complex health needs, and to stop prescribing gluten-free food to most patients.
People needing non-urgent elective surgery who smoke will be referred to stop-smoking services and overweight patients will be encouraged to lose weight before their operation and failure to attend the programmes “may have an impact on whether individuals could undergo their procedure”.
It will be linked to hospital records including the number of appointments with the GP or practice nurse, prescribed medications, and unplanned admissions for individual patients.
[14] Clare Panniker, the Chief Executive at Basildon is leading the success regime initiative, which aimed to tackle a deficit in Mid and south Essex of £216 million by 2018-19.
[15] The clinical commissioning group joint committee for mid and south Essex in November 2019 reported that local hospitals were “now working” to a 40-week referral to treatment target, more than twice the time specified in the NHS Constitution, in an effort to reduce the risk of 52-week breaches.