In the blog below, Managing Director Will Warburton and Policy Fellow Emily Hughes outline the Shelford Group’s response to the government’s Ten Year Health Plan consultation.
The Shelford Group has submitted a response to the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England’s consultation on the Ten Year Health Plan. The plan is part of the government’s health mission to build a health service fit for the future.
The first step in the government’s process was the independent review of the NHS in England, led by Lord Darzi, to understand the scale of the challenge facing the health service, published in September. Now the government is working to develop a plan to tackle the challenges it identified, co-developing the plan with the public, staff and patients through a detailed engagement exercise.
The Shelford Group shares the government’s ambitions to improve health and keep people well for longer, while ensuring universal access to high quality care. To achieve these ambitions, in our consultation response we call on the Ten Year Health Plan to include the following priorities:
- Aligning policy ambitions and financial frameworks, through a coherent, unambiguous operating model and financial architecture
- A more resilient system of care and support to improve health outcomes, through significant investment and upgrades in primary care, community care, social care, and mental health, as well as action on major public health challenges
- Leveraging the quality and efficiency benefits of operating at scale to accelerate improvement in standards
- Capital investment to unlock productivity, digital transformation, decarbonisation and improved staff and patient experience
- The development of a research and innovation ecosystem capable of accelerating the discovery, development and spread of innovation to meet present and future population needs across the country
- An implementation plan for a sustainable workforce policy focusing on three priority areas – train, retain, and reform
Our consultation response also sets out what we believe to be the biggest enablers and challenges in shifting care from hospitals to communities; these include closer joint working between primary and secondary care, introducing performance measures and targets that incentivise care delivery closer to home, while centralising care – for example, some specialised services – where necessary.
We set out what we believe to be the biggest challenges and enablers to making better use of technology in health and care. We highlight the importance of improving basic software and equipment, as well as the benefits that can be delivered through electronic patient records, connected data, and patient portals. We also emphasise the importance of a range of other enablers to support the use of new technologies, including implementation capability and capacity, public and staff engagement, and the approach to people and culture.
The Ten Year Health Plan will set out a new approach to preventing illnesses earlier and tackling the causes of ill health, and in our response, we set out how we can use technology and innovations in service models to help identify illness earlier, as well as delivering our role as anchor institutions in improving the health of our local communities.
Read our full submission to the Ten Year Health Plan consultation here.