10.05.17
Stevens: NHS should be braced for ‘sleeves rolled up’ year
NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens has declared that 2017-18 is likely to be a “sleeves rolled up” year for workers across the health and social care sector as he pushed for better collaborative working across services.
Speaking at the King’s Fund leadership and management summit yesterday, Stevens’s speech was, as expected, muted due to restrictions placed on public service leaders in the run up to a general election called purdah.
But he did update the audience, made up of health leaders and researchers, on the progress of the Five Year Forward View (FYFV) and stated that the vanguards programme had already show early signs of success.
“We have begun to decisively reverse underfunding in primary care services since NHS England was founded,” he said.
“As a health service, we have made a start on the practical redesign of care through vanguards, and we are now looking to expand that.
“There is no version of reality where we don’t need stronger primary care, more expansive and resilient mental health services or better social care integration to name just three,” Stevens also added.
He also explained that without prejudging the result of this year’s general election, it’s clear that the core steps set out in the FYFV were broadly the right priorities for the NHS.
The NHS England CEO did confirm that more information about how the organisation would practically implement the steps laid out in the FYFV will be announced in June at NHS Confederation’s conference on 14 June – the week after purdah restrictions are lifted.
He concluded by calling on workers across the NHS to pull their sleeves up and work together to improve the situation of the workforce agenda.
“But for most of our frontline staff working across the NHS one of the big questions we have to get right is the workforce agenda,” he argued. “There’s a general view that we’ve had a pretty fragmented winter and need to raise our game.”
Stevens said that there was still a lot of work to do on capital and infrastructure, meaning that the NHS had to make sure it mobilised its efficiency agenda – which requires action by individual organisations, but also collective action locally and nationally.
“2017-18 is going to be a ‘sleeves rolled up’ year when there is going to be a lot of changes happening across the country,” he concluded.
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