News and reports

On the 13th March 2024, Healthwatch England published their 2022-23 annual report ‘The Value of Listening’. Which highlighted the value of the voices shared with Healthwatch over the last 12 months in shaping health and care services.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD), is a general term for conditions affecting the heart or blood vessels and causes 1 in 4 deaths in England. High blood pressure is the largest single risk factor for CVD and can increase your risk of serious and potentially life-threatening health conditions, such as heart attacks stroke, kidney disease and vascular dementia.

On the 5th March, our Executive Director, Veronica Kirwan and Communications Officer, Alexandra Hawkins presented our 2023 Rye Listening Tour Report at the East Sussex Health and Wellbeing Board. This was an opportunity to share what residents of Rye and the surrounding villages told us during the tour with local health and care decision makers.

Dentistry continues to be one of the most common reasons people contact us at Healthwatch East Sussex. Reasons included challenges accessing dentistry services during the lockdown, problems finding NHS dentists accepting new patients and delays getting access to emergency dental treatment.

Each quarter we draw together public and patient experiences of health and care shared with us via enquiries to our Information & Signposting service, reviews on our Feedback Centre, public events and through our community and professional networks.

This document is a summary of the things we have heard about health and care, the issues we are monitoring and the actions we are taking.

Most local authorities have significant funding gaps for next year. East Sussex County Council is facing a funding gap of £55 million. As local authorities have a legal responsibility to set a balanced budget, this means making some difficult decisions about how the Council spends its money in future.

In February 2024, the three local Healthwatch in Sussex sought people’s experiences of ‘Patients Know Best’ through a short web-based poll.

Patients Know Best is designed to create a single secure Personal Health Record where health/social care providers bring together patient information in one place. Patients can then access correspondence, test results and other features.

Throughout September 2023, Healthwatch East Sussex conducted various activities to engage with people from Rye and the surrounding villages to hear their experiences of health and social care.

As part of our activity, Healthwatch staff and volunteers carried out a ‘mystery shopping’ exercise of six GP surgery websites in and around Rye. This report summarises our findings and recommendations.

Throughout September 2023, Healthwatch East Sussex conducted various engagement activities to engage with people from Rye and the surrounding villages to hear their experiences of health and social care.

As part of our activity, we conducted ‘Enter and View’ visits at 19 care homes settings across Rye and Rother District. This report summarises our findings and recommendations.

Throughout September 2023, Healthwatch East Sussex conducted various engagement activities to engage with people from Rye and the surrounding villages to hear their experiences of health and social care. As part of our activity, we also conducted Enter and Views at various care homes and carried out a mystery shop of GP surgery websites in and around Rye.

People are being urged to support NHS services, and know how to get help over the coming days, as health and care teams prepare for further industrial action by junior doctors. Strike action is planned to start at 7am on Saturday, 24 February, and continue until 23:59 on Wednesday (28 February).

At the end 2023 we shared a consultation being held by NHS England (London and South East regions) about the future location of very specialist cancer treatment services for children living in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, Kent, Medway, south London, and most of Surrey.