30 June 2023

Increasing recruitment is not enough on its own so we are also setting out how we will retain more staff and use tech to free up them up to do what they do best: care for patients. With this NHS workforce plan, we are investing and taking the actions today that will shape the care needed for the future.

Ahead of the NHS’s 75th birthday, the NHS Assembly has developed an independent report: The NHS In England at 75: priorities for the future. This will help the NHS, nationally and locally, plan how to respond to long term opportunities and challenges. The Assembly found a growing consensus that the NHS should now focus on three key areas for long term development: better preventing ill health, personalising care and delivering more co-ordinated care closer to home.

The government’s mandate to NHS England was published earlier this month setting out the objectives it should seek to achieve. I was delighted to see that the continued to shift towards community-based health care, including enabling more people to benefit from proactive and personalised care included.

And some further good news for personalised care, the Health Service Journal (HSJ) announced the shortlist for its Patient Safety Awards 2023. Acute Respiratory Infection hubs have been shortlisted for the Primary Care Initiative of the Year award. All winners will be announced at a ceremony on 18 September 2023.

Finally, I would like to congratulate NHS England's Head of Nursing for Palliative and End of Life Care, Sherree Fagge, who has been recognised for her services to improving healthcare in her field in the King’s Birthday Honours. Sherree receives a British Empire Medal.

NHS75 round up

On 5 July 2023, the NHS will mark 75 years of service. We will be celebrating this milestone by showcasing the best of the NHS and encouraging as many of you as possible to join us with NHS 75 activities.

Our NHS at 75 photography - shortlist announced 

NHS Parliamentary Awards 2023 - shortlist announced

The shortlist for the NHS Parliamentary Awards 2023 has been announced. The awards  celebrate those who have innovated, impressed and made a real difference to how the NHS provides care for patients. Congratulations and good luck to all the finalists! Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on Wednesday 5 July.

‘parkrun for the NHS’ – toolkit launched

To mark the NHS’s 75th birthday, the NHS has teamed up with parkrun UK to host ‘parkrun for the NHS’ on Saturday 8 July and Sunday 9 July (juniors). Tens of thousands of people across the UK are expected to take part and it’s an excellent opportunity for NHS bodies to connect with their local communities. The partnership was announced earlier this year and we are pleased to launch a dedicated toolkit hosted on FutureNHS with ideas about how to work with your local parkrun events to make ‘parkrun for the NHS’ a huge success.

Get involved

Call for volunteers: research into career development in primary care

The Institute for Employment Studies (IES) is researching career development and job moves within primary care for NHS England. IES would like to speak to people who have positively navigated the landscape to understand how this can be successfully achieved.

Staff in non-medial roles are asked to take part in the research and be interviewed about their reasons for any career moves, actions made or behaviour that helped them to take that first step, and any useful resources they can suggest to help others make career choices now and in the future. Please email Zofia Bajorek for more information.

National care navigation training for general practice staff

The delivery plan for recovering access to primary care, published in May, committed to training 6,500 general practice staff (one person from every practice in the country) in care navigation skills. Practice and primary care network managers can nominate one member of staff, ideally reception staff and care navigators involved in triaging requests, to complete the virtual care navigation training. It’s anticipated that this will be a popular programme and that spaces will fill up quickly.

On completion, individuals will be confident to communicate effectively with patients and be able to signpost to the most relevant team member or local services depending on patient needs. An advanced training offer will be available at a later date for those with experience of care navigation who can support and embed it into practices and networks for sustainability and standardisation. If you have any questions please email carenavigationtraining@england.nhs.uk. 

Action on outpatients: Improving access to PIFU

The Outpatient Recovery and Transformation Programme’s next Action on Outpatient sprint focussing on improving access to patient initiated follow-up (PIFU) is running from 26 June – 21 July 2023.

PIFU enables patients or their carers to book follow-up appointments when they need them, giving patients more choice and control over when they access care and reducing unnecessary visits to hospital.

Over 80 providers have committed their involvement and will receive support for PIFU implementation, including personalised data packs and advice from clinicians on using PIFU in top specialties. A range of PIFU resources to support the sprint have been produced.

Applications close on 31 July 2023. The winner will be awarded a £500 bursary to spend on a self care project. View the Self Care Forum website for more information, including an application form. Past winners and highly commended entries are also showcased on the website.

Resources

Green Social Prescribing

We have recently published new videos from a number of the test and learn sites which are available on NHS England's YouTube channel. Additional videos illustrating the impact are available on the National Academy for Social Prescribing's website.

Natural England has also recently published a new video about Growing Together in South East Essex which offers a therapeutic gardening, employment training classes and workshops to support people living with a mental health condition and other disabilities. See how the project has supported peoples’ wellbeing and created a sense of community. 

New resources to help ambulance services reduce health inequalities

The Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE), working on behalf of the UK’s NHS ambulance services, has released new guidance on how the ambulance sector can contribute to reducing health inequalities, both as providers of care and as anchor institutions within their regions. The resources underline common goals and objectives in a concerted attempt to balance the playing field for all service users and overcome the challenges of health and social care inequality. It also includes tangible examples in which ambulance services and their staff can ensure their services are more appropriate to the communities they serve.

Vaccine information for diverse communities

A wide-range of bespoke and translated resources are available to encourage those eligible for the spring COVID-19 vaccination, or the evergreen offer (for those who have had just one COVID vaccination or not had one at all) to get their dose before the 30 June 2023. You can access these via CommsLink, the Equalities Community of Practice and the Campaign Resource Centre.  

New resources are also available to support take-up of routine vaccinations. This includes whooping cough vaccination during pregnancy, MMR, and an animation on how vaccines work aimed at families, parents and care givers.  

Publications

All about personal health budgets (easy read guide)

The updated all about personal health budgets is an easy read guide aimed at people, families and carers that receive or know someone who receives/has a personal health budget. This guide can also be used by health and care staff that offer and support people to get a personal health budget.

Decision support tools supporting elective priorities

On 23 May, NHS England wrote to integrated care boards on Elective priorities for 2023/24. One of the core requirements is for patients to be involved in shared decision-making (SDM) conversations ‘to discuss the benefits, risks, alternatives and likely outcomes of the surgery, as well as the perioperative recovery period. This allows patients to confirm their decision to proceed with the surgery, seek further specialist advice or pursue alternative options.’

This recognises the importance of SDM for improving system efficiency, outcomes and reducing litigation. Patient data tells us that 5 in 10 people don’t feel included in decisions about their health care and 1 in 7 people experience ‘post decision regret’. Litigation from ill-informed consent costs the NHS £48 million per year in clinical negligence payments.

Decision support tools are tools for SDM conversations between clinicians and people in high volume low complexity (HVLC) elective pathways. Free short refresher e-learning is available via the Personalised Care Institute. 

NHS staff in London are harnessing digital technology to help heart failure patients be safe and well at home

This video tells the story of Laurence, who lives with heart failure, and how specialists from Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust are supporting him through technology-enabled remote monitoring. He uses a secure smartphone app to send regular blood pressure and weight readings to the team, who are able to monitor the health of multiple patients like Laurence and give them advice without them having to visit a hospital clinic.

The video, which also features Consultant Cardiologist, Dr Carla Plymen and Specialist Heart Failure Nurse Judith Chilcott, was produced in partnership with the NHS National Innovation Collaborative for digital health, a learning and support network for health and care professionals across the country who are delivering local technology-enabled services to support people at home and in communities.

Find out more about the Innovation Collaborative including more case studies from across England and be part of the journey, join the FutureNHS Innovation Collaborative.

Exploring the impact of technology-enabled blood pressure monitoring

This podcast explores the impact of technology-enabled blood pressure monitoring in the north and south of England. South-west London Integrated Care System Project Manager Jacqueline Chapman and South Wirral Primary Care Network GP and Clinical Director Thomas Wyatt discuss shared and different challenges, learning and outcomes on their respective Blood Pressure @home journeys. Find previous podcasts in the series.

Involving VCSE organisations in neighbourhood health ecosystems

Locality's latest health and wellbeing report examines the critical role of voluntary, community, and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations in neighbourhood health ecosystems. It is the latest instalment in its work on the government’s VCSE Health and Wellbeing Alliance – representing community organisations in the development of policy to tackle health inequalities.

How partnership working with people and communities results in better health outcomes/improved care

The third and final episode in a integrated care podcast series to highlight partnership working and relationship building across systems – Partnerships in Practice. This episode focuses on the approaches taken within Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes (BLMK) Integrated Care System, and how collaboration between system partners and local communities is helping systems to design better solutions for the challenges local communities are facing.

Reducing long-term opioid use through the NHS Patient Safety Strategy

Evidence suggests the NHS Patient Safety Strategy, which was published in July 2019, is now halfway to achieving its aims of saving an additional 1,000 lives and £100 million per year. An example of the strategy’s impact linked to personalised care, is the Medicines Safety Improvement Programme’s work to reduce long-term use of high-strength opioids. This has seen an estimated 414 fewer deaths and 2,569 fewer cases of moderate harm due to long-term opioid use since the initiative began in November 2021. Read our Reducing long-term opioid use case study to find out more. Further examples of the Patient Safety Strategy’s impact can be found on the NHS England website.

World Health Organisation: wheelchair provision guidelines

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has published Wheelchair Provision Guidelines showcasing innovative policy using Personal Wheelchair Budgets (PWB) as the example of the person-centred funding model for wheelchair provision.

PWBs became a ‘right to have’ and form part of the NHS Long Term Plan commitments for achieving 200,000 Personal Health Budgets. A case study showing how a PWBs can enable postural and mobility needs to be included in wider care planning and can support people to access a wider choice of wheelchairs when implemented well.

World Health Organisation: Population health management in primary health care: a proactive approach to improve health and well-being

This publication identifies key success factors at the system, organisational and clinical levels to enable population health management in primary health care (PHC). It includes 12 country examples from across the WHO European Region showing how population health management is used in PHC. The publication provides a set of 16 policy actions to help PHC providers move towards a population health management approach that are classified following the PHC levers of the WHO Operational Framework for Primary Health Care.

What matters to you day?

Celebrated every year on 6 June, the What Matters To You? Day campaign encourages healthcare professionals to ask “What matters to you?” to understand what matters to an individual in their life. It’s about having meaningful conversations with people, as well as their families and carers. We shared a blog from Georgi Daluiso-King, Personalised Care Lead and Advanced Practitioner Physiotherapist in Sussex MSK Partnership Central about the transformative power of asking the question along with a video from some of peer and system leaders about what matters to them.

Children and young people’s social prescribing: new evidence review

National Academy for Social Prescribing has published a new evidence review about social prescribing for children and young people, alongside the results of a survey with professionals. 

Dates for your diary 

Links of the month

Brigstock Road Community Hub: face-to-face support for a diverse community: A new community hub in Croydon brings together statutory and voluntary bodies to offer face-to-face advice on anything from housing to mental health.

What I have learned about embedding mental health practitioners in primary care: Dr Emma Tiffin shares how mental health practitioners are placing professionals with mental health expertise within primary care, to bridge the gap between primary and community mental healthcare working with social prescribing link workers and health and wellbeing coaches.

The Business of Healthcare Podcast with Tara Humphrey: Personalised Care Planning in Practice - Episode 247. In this episode, Tara shares her experience of creating a care plan for her youngest who has type 1 diabetes.

How delegating healthcare activities to my PAs has changed my life: Rob Moriarty, a Peer Leader and member of NHS England's strategic co-production group, employs personal assistants (PAs) to support him. He shares how having healthcare activities delegated to his PAs has made his life better.