The organisations that commission and provide health and social care services across Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire County have today published their joint five year Sustainability and Transformation Plan.
Click here to read the Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP).
Local NHS providers, clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), councils, and other health and care services have formed the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire STP footprint – one of 44 in England – to collectively plan how local services will work to improve the quality of care, their population’s health and manage finances across the system.
STPs will drive a genuine and sustainable transformation in health and care outcomes over the next five years and help accelerate the implementation of the NHS Five Year Forward View locally. As well as strengthening local relationships through joint planning and working, STPs provide partner organisations with a shared understanding of the current challenges, a joint ambition and the steps needed to achieve the sustainability of local health and care services for the future.
The STP for Nottingham and Nottinghamshire addresses how organisations will close the ‘three gaps’ identified in the NHS Five Year Forward View – the future vision for the NHS and social care – which relate to health and wellbeing, care and quality, and finance and efficiency.
The STP identifies five local ‘high impact’ areas for change:
- Promote wellbeing, prevention, independence and self-care
- Strengthen primary, community, social care and carer services
- Simplify urgent and emergency care
- Deliver technology enabled care
- Ensure consistent and evidenced based pathways in planned care.
In addition, key supporting areas of work have been highlighted within the plan as crucial to delivery, including; improve housing and environment, strengthen acute services, driving system efficiency and effectiveness, future proof workforce and organisational development and proactive communication and engagement.
David Pearson, STP lead for Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, said: “The health and care organisations in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire have come together over the last few months to find ways to change services in our City and County – using the money we have in the best way – to prevent ill health, modernise services, joining them up to provide the right care in the best place. We aim to keep people independent and at home, but with excellent specialist care available when they need it.”
“We know that if we do not change the way we do things, the gap between what we want from health and social care and what can be delivered will grow as ‘doing nothing’ means we will have a shortfall of more than a £600m in our budgets. We know that we can make better use of the money and improve many services but only if we change the way we do things. To get this right we will want to work closely with local people. This is why I am pleased we are publishing the plan today and inviting feedback on the draft STP.”
Councillor Alex Norris, Chair of the Nottingham City Health and Wellbeing Board, said: “Now that our plan has been drafted, all organisations involved with the STP want to talk to those people who live and work in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire about how it can be improved and what needs to be done to make this happen. We will be listening to many individuals and organisations over the coming weeks and months, including patients, service-users and carers, particularly around any changes to services and to understand the support that people want and need to help them live healthier, more independent lives.”
The STP partners will continue to work together to develop and deliver these plans – ensuring that health and care services are planned and delivered around the local needs of communities rather than around individual organisations.
Local people will see health and social care services increasingly working as one to improve care planning and patient and service user experiences of care. More services will move out of hospital and into community settings, closer to home, providing better access and value for public money. Improving social care, services for carers and access to primary and community urgent care will relieve pressure on the hospital, helping people to navigate the system and get the right care, first time with the support and information they need.
Additional support and information will be available to encourage people to adopt healthier lifestyles, prevent disease and help people manage their own health better – improving quality of life and independence into old age. Information sharing and new technology will underpin many of the changes to how health and care services are delivered, from more professionals being able to access records and care plans through to personal devices used to monitor long-term health conditions.
The STP published today is the draft plan submitted to NHS England on 21 October 2016. This plan will continue to be developed, it is not final is a reflection of local organisations’ current thinking about what needs to be done to improve health and wellbeing, the quality of care and local services, and address the financial challenge. As well as publishing the full plan, a summary of the key areas of focus has also been produced.
Specific engagement and formal consultation will be planned to inform decisions about any significant changes to services as the STP is developed and implemented over the next five years. In the meantime, the STP partner organisations are keen to hear feedback on the draft plan published today which outlines key areas of focus and a general direction of travel for health and care services across Nottingham and Nottinghamshire.
Your feedback
Comments and feedback can be emailed to STP@nottscc.gov.uk or sent to:
David Pearson
County Hall
Loughborough Rd
Nottingham
NG2 7QP
You can also call the STP programme office on 0115 977 3577.