A GROUP of 100 GPs which has taken responsibility for managing the NHS budget across an area facing severe healthcare pressures has unveiled a five-year plan to transform services.

Hambleton, Richmondshire and Whitby clinical commissioning group (CCG) said it aims to create a more effective and integrated community system, despite being left with a debt of £1.8m by North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust and receiving a relatively low level of funding from the Government.

The CCG took control of a 1,400sq mile area centred around eight market towns in April, as part of a Government move to give GPs and other clinicians greater power to influence decisions affecting their patients.

At a meeting of North Yorkshire’s scrutiny of health committee, the CCG’s chief clinical officer, Dr Vicky Pleydell, said the Government's NHS funding formula was likely to change next year from being weighted towards levels of urban deprivation to being based on the number of elderly residents.

Dr Pleydell said while her CCG would receive £1,192 for each resident this year, she hoped the high proportion of elderly residents would mean services would be properly funded in the long-term.

Health campaigners in the county and politicians, including Richmond MP William Hague, have pointed towards the relatively low-level of NHS funding in the area as a key cause of pressures on services.

The meeting heard it would be impossible for CCGs to determine by how much they were being under-funded and it could be years before extra funding is received as moving the money to the area could cause problems in previously better funded places.

Dr Pleydell told councillors: “It may take ten years for that money to move around the NHS.”

Dr Pleydell said to make the most of the funding it has, the CCG, which serves 142,000 residents, had launched a study into transforming the community system, to create more effective, integrated community services that enable patients to be cared for close to home.

Other key parts of the CCG’s long-term plan include ensuring mental health patients are treated closer to their homes, improving the effectiveness of referrals for planned care and building improved services in the community for vulnerable children and those with complex needs.