South Reading Patient Voice

Mr Luke March has been appointed as chair of the Western Berkshire Accountable Care System - a collaboration of the principal NHS organisations in Western Berkshire.

We are facing a period of several years in which NHS funding growth will be around 1% per year on average - hardly enough to keep up with population growth, let alone the ageing of the population, increasing living standards or advances in medicine. In Western Berkshire the strategy for the NHS five-year forward view has been to bring together the principal parts of the NHS in the area into a place-based collaboration known as an Accountable Care System (ACS) which will seek ways of working together by agreement to improve health care and health system efficiency.

The initial ACS will be formed by agreement between the Royal Berkshire Hospital Foundation Trust, the Berkshire Healthcare Foundation Trust and the four CCGs of Western Berkshire.

The collaboration will be able to change pathways for patient treatment, change payment procedures and incentives between the partners, move activity from one site to another, perhaps from hospital to community but only by agreement, however hardly reached, between the partners.

Mr March has been a non-executive director in the NHS since 1998. He was Chair of Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust from 2005 to 2013 and of the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases NHS Foundation Trust from 2013 to 2015. In addition he has also chaired the Audit Committee of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and worked as Group Company Secretary and Compliance Director of the TSB Group, Corporate Governance Director of the BT Group, Chief Executive of the mortgage industry regulator and most recently Group Compliance Director of the Royal Mail Group. He is also currently Chairman of the National Churches’ Trust and the Building Societies Trust and serves as Lay Canon on the Chapter of Salisbury Cathedral.

Price Waterhouse Cooper consultants have been tasked with creating the new system of payments by the members of the ACS.

It is hoped that the three local authorities of Western Berkshire will be able to join the ACS eventually as may the South Central Ambulance Foundation Trust.