Agenda item

Joint report of the Director of Community and Children’s Services, the Director of Public Health and the Deputy Director of Public Health.

The Committee received a joint report of the Director of Community and Children’s Services and the Director of Public Health. The report provided an update on sexual and reproductive health services in the City of London during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Members expressed concern about users of sexual health services providing their office addresses instead of home addresses and asked what was being done to recover the cost of using the services from those who worked in the City but were not residents. In reply, an Officer said that sexual health clinics are open access and therefore anyone living in England has the right to access a sexual health clinic anywhere in the country. The use of work addresses is a known issue, however, and the clinics did ask for correct home addresses to be provided as much as possible, but that unfortunately there would always be some users who did not follow this, and that this can be for a variety of reasons.

A Member questioned whether service users could be asked to provide details of the health authority where they reside as opposed to their home address so that the money could be reclaimed. In response, an Officer underlined that sexual health data is kept in a confidential way and is not linked to primary care records. This means there are restrictions in terms of how the data can be used. When a user does provide an address outside the City of London, it is billed to the relevant local health authority. Previous investigations have shown that it is only a small number of users who provide office addresses.

The Chairman said there should be provision for collecting a home address and an address for communication, and that it was particularly important to be able to get the address of users from overseas, so that any costs could be charged back to their home country. An Officer reiterated that users are asked for their home address, and those who give an office address instead did so knowingly. The Officer added that there may not be provision for international recharging. The Officer concluded by stating that the importance of treating infectious diseases as early as possible outweighed that of reclaiming costs associated with a very small number of foreign nationals attending sexual health services, for whom these costs cannot be recharged.

A Member asked what the costs involved are. In reply, an Officer underlined that sexual health and substance abuse treatment services made up the largest portion of money spent from the Public Health grant.

An Officer also agreed that the issues raised about cross-charging could be discussed with the local specialist sexual health service and a formal response provided to this committee.

The Public Health team said that a sexual and reproductive health Needs Assessment is in development and can be brought back to the Committee when ready.

RESOLVED – That, the report be noted.