21.03.14
Ready for the future
Source: National Health Executive Mar/Apr 2014
You’ll find lots of coverage from the Health and Care Innovation Expo 2014 spread around this edition of National Health Executive, beginning on page 24.
It was a fascinating and worthwhile event, with valuable contributions made by speakers and participants from all levels of the NHS across a vast range of topics. It was hosted by NHS England, and the organisers tried hard to make events engaging and participatory, with a fair amount of success. Whether you were there or not, take a look at our reports from the event as you’re sure to find something of value.
Integrating and transforming care is a big topic in this edition, and no wonder – it’s a big topic out
there for you too. We’ve got an interview with Professor Sir Ian Gilmore following his role on the mayoral commission into integrated care in Liverpool, while the Better Care Fund (BCF) process also rumbles on, with first drafts of local areas’ plans submitted by 14 February and the final deadline of 4 April fast approaching.
NHS England obviously had a few concerns with some of the early plans, because it quickly launched some ‘clarifications’. Hopefully its updated technical guidance, templates, statistical significance calculator and allocations spreadsheet will be helpful to
the teams busy putting these vital plans together.
We include a major discussion on the BCF on pages 30-32, with participants mostly still unsure whether it presents a big opportunity, or a big distraction. What is beyond doubt, says John Wilderspin, chief executive of NHS Central Southern CSU (interviewed on page 26-27), is that it has focused minds. People cannot ignore integrated care when cash is being stripped out of existing budgets and pooled in one transformation fund. They have to engage with each other, across health, social care and local government, and focus on the person – the patient, the care user, the citizen.
This need for person-centred approaches remains key in the NHS more generally post-Francis, as discussed in our ‘compassion in care’ report on pages 42-44, as well as in our interview with Patients Know Best chief executive and founder Dr Mohammad
Al-Ubaydli, who makes a moral case for patient-controlled records, but also a practical one. Patient access, involvement and decision-making about their own care cuts consultation times, improves outcomes, and makes clinicians’ jobs easier, not harder, the evidence shows. Whether Dr Al-Ubaydli can convince enough doctors of this to do something truly revolutionary remains to be seen.
Elsewhere, we have analysis of the NHS Staff Survey results, a look at the work of the SBRI Healthcare Programme, a radical call for the creation of a universal urgent community eyecare service across England and Northern Ireland, and much else besides.
(Image: c. NHS England)
Adam Hewitt
Editor