In the run up to Christmas and after New Year the Policy team were busy leading on the College’s response to Sir Michael Marmot’s review of the impact of COVID-19 on health inequalities, and in a similar vein fed into the Scottish Academy’s health inequalities manifesto ahead of Holyrood elections next May. The team also participated in a House of Lords Public Services Committee event on the impact of COVID-19 and were also involved in discussions between Health Education England and the Independent Healthcare Providers Network on the use of the Independent Sector in the pandemic response. The College’s position is that this must not undermine the NHS or lead to clinicians and perioperative staff being spread too thinly, and that the needs of trainees must be considered. Read more here.
Before and after Christmas we participated in weekly calls with Professor Stephen Powis and with PHE around vaccination, the lockdown and the impact of COVID-19 on secondary care. We have also been in touch with multiple policymakers on the vaccine programme and participated in calls monitoring the impact of Brexit so far on the NHS supply chain. These are ongoing dialogues so if you would like to feed into that or have any other feedback or questions please contact the Policy team on birmingham@rcsed.ac.uk.