Managing Director Will Warburton looks back at 2022 and the impact of the Shelford Group this year…
The Shelford Group is an NHS collaboration between ten of the largest provider organisations in England. Collectively, we represent over £17bn annual turnover, employ over 170,000 staff and delivers care to a population of over 15 million people each year, across a comprehensive spectrum of health services including primary, community, acute and highly specialised care.
The core activity of the Group remains enabling mutual learning within members, through providing peer support and sharing best practice. As a national collaborative, we work closely with NHS and government leaders to offer our collective experience and expertise to inform policy development, and to provide system leadership in our strategic priority areas.
Last year we published our 2021-25 strategy, setting out six priorities for our work. These were building back from the pandemic, transformation of patient care, people, investment, life sciences and innovation, and anchor collaborations.
We have made good progress across each of these areas over the past year:
Pandemic building back
- All our members continue to work on minimising long waits for elective care, including Oxford reducing 52-week waits by more than 75% in one year, and Guys and St Thomas’s deploying HIT surgery for non-emergency operations.
- Sub-groups have shared approaches and informed national guidance on infection prevention and control, diagnostics, urgent and emergency care, and the NHS’s winter plan.
Patient care
- We have launched the Emergency Department Safer Nursing Care Tool, refreshed the original Safer Nursing Care Tool (SNCT) and are scoping a redevelopment for Children and Young People. The safe staffing faculty continues to grow, augmented by accreditation by Birmingham City University.
- Trusts are using increasingly advanced technology to speed up diagnosis, such as Birmingham’s use of scanning technology and artificial intelligence to speed up the diagnosis of potentially cancerous skin lesions, ensuring 90% of patients were seen within two weeks of referral from their GP.
- Our Chief Clinical Information Officer Group is actively engaged on national policy on data collection, and the development of federated data platforms.
- We continue to work closely with local and national partners on the proposed delegation of commissioning of specialised services to Integrated Care Boards, with a focus on ensuring the appropriate commissioning infrastructure to ensure better quality, equity and value for patients who use specialised services.
People
- Sub-groups have contributed to NHS policy on workforce, including the Messenger Review of Leadership and Management, and national strategies on digital workforce and medical retention, particularly on ‘retire and return’.
- Workforce directors are using a set of comprehensive HR metrics, including the Workforce Race Equality Standard, to identify areas of best practice, how to best support our staff, and where members can learn from one another.
- Subgroups have informed national policy on staff vaccination and, with medical directors, on the Medical Race Equality action plan.
Investment
- Chief Financial Officers have informed national policy, including pushing for longer-term capital and revenue allocations to enable more effective use of resources, and have shared approaches on efficiency and productivity.
- We have a continued focus on working with government to ensure the case is continued to be made for the NHS as a key part of economic growth.
Life sciences
- Shelford members have engaged with senior figures and partner bodies in industry, government and academia, profiling work in Guy’s and St Thomas, Cambridge, Newcastle and Manchester that is improving care for patients and generating economic growth for the country.
- We have a continued focus as a group on how we can collaborate to support faster spread of innovations that address NHS priorities.
Anchor collaborations
- We have engaged with government at national and mayoral levels to share the work we are doing with partners on improving health and reducing inequalities, including examples from Newcastle, Cambridge, Imperial and King’s.
- All Trusts are working as active participants in Integrated Care Systems to support their aims of better care, better population health, better value and enhancing the NHS contribution to social and economic growth.
Looking ahead to 2023, our priority now is to continue to work with our local and national partners in the NHS, social care, government and other sectors to help continue delivering the best possible care for our patients. As well as continuing our work on mutual learning and informing policy, we want to identify ways that we can collaborate on delivery on priority areas as a group.