HEALTH bosses are to ask you how they should spend money on health services - and your answers could shape how patients are treated in the region.

A series of events which will act as a sounding-board for views on healthcare in North Yorkshire are to be organised over the next few months in the wake of the NHS's Next Stage Review.

Members of the public, doctors, nurses and voluntary workers will all be invited to share their views about which services North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust (PCT) should be investing in, with their opinions being considered when final decisions on where money is poured into healthcare over the next three years are made in the autumn.

The Healthy Ambitions programme has picked out a string of key areas for improvement, including halting the rise in obesity, halving the number of children admitted to hospital with asthma and providing better stroke care.

But while this will act as a blueprint, Jane Marshall - the PCT's director of commissioning and service development - says there is still time for people to let the organisation know what they think before vital funding decisions are made.

"What this review does is give us a set of guidelines - eight different pathways which start off at birth and go on through a patient's life - and they are pathways to the care which we believe patients should receive," she said.

"It says to the commissioners of PCT services that we are going to be advised on what the best possible care we can offer is. We are trying to be more explicit about the level of care and treatment patients can expect to receive and the best way we can do things.

"If the next stage review says something is the right thing to do and we are not doing it, then we have to ask ourselves a set of questions about why we are not doing it. It's all about getting the right service in the right place for the patient. There are a huge amount of things we would like to look at."

Ms Marshall says the consultation over the coming months will be crucial in deciding where health money goes in North Yorkshire.

"I can sit in an office and talk about what we want to do, but we want to take it out to the people," she said.

"By autumn 2008, we need to publish a commissioning strategy for North Yorkshire and York residents which we can publish to patients and stakeholders such as GPs and nurses, and we are also looking to include other organisations such as the voluntary sector.

"We need to make sure what we are buying fits with what other people want to see. We will go out and talk to people, because this commissioning strategy will determine how we spend our money for the next three years.

"I think there will be a whole set of priorities identified, but we need to meet people to see what they would like. We need to design our commissioning strategy so we reach out to people, because different people respond to different things.

"But we need to be ready for what we have to do by next April. We're starting this consultation process earlier than we have done in previous years and, in due course, we will be publishing a series of events at which people can make the views known."