Block and the NHS Long Term Plan
The aspirations set out in the NHS Long Term Plan provide a far-reaching vision to transform the health & care of our society. The plan contains key tenets that combined, deliver a vision for how the NHS will change over the next decade.
Set out below are the areas of the plan which Block see as key:
- Delivery of new service models: Providing a focus on integration of services in all health and care settings, through the development of Integrated Care Systems and Primary Care Networks, to alleviate pressure on critical points, such as hospital & emergency care and empowering patients to take more control of the care they receive.
- Tackling prevention and health inequalities: Taking a proactive stance to prevent ill health from occurring in the first place. Especially within communities that are more predisposed to some of the main risks. This means tackling issues such as obesity, alcohol abuse and smoking, as well as dealing with air pollution and the impacts of homelessness.
- Improving the quality of care and outcomes: Delivering improved care across all major health conditions, including a focus on cancer, diabetes, and stroke care, as well as focus on adult mental health services. With a specific emphasis on children and young people’s physical and mental health and tackling challenges within the areas of learning difficulties and autism.
- Support for NHS staff: Staff enablement and support is central to the plan, with an emphasis on ensuring staff can work more productively, creating a better work life balance and improved well-being, leading to improved staff retention. Recruitment is also key to success, with training, education, and international recruitment seen as critical.
- Digital enablement: The focus on digital is more than the use of innovative technology. It is about putting information in the hands of the patient to improve their experience and enable staff to make better and quicker decisions, to deliver more effective care. It is also about the design and delivery of improved services through better analysis of patient & population data.
- Taxpayer value for money: The plan sets out five key tests for the NHS to meet, with a primary objective of putting the NHS on a sustainable financial path and returning to financial balance. Also focusing on better use of capital investment to drive transformation in the most efficient way possible.
NHS Implication
From an NHS perspective, the plan provides organisations with a vision of new ways of working, setting priorities, which need to be both understood and considered by senior management and clinicians alike. The Nuffield Trust Briefing Paper, released after the publication of the Long Term Plan, articulates well one of the main objectives of the plan, “it represents a long list of instructions and ambitions aimed at the NHS system itself, designed to signal where investment should be targeted.” More than this, it provides the aspirations of the NHS to deliver more collaborative, efficient, and equitable care over the next decade.
Focus on specific health and care outcomes, whether that be:
- cancer
- mental health
- diabetes
- or dementia,
provides prioritisation and focus on these areas, considering how data, research & innovation, as well as digital transformation can all contribute towards systemic change.
The focus however is also about how the NHS workforce can be enabled and how patients can be better informed and empowered to take control of their care, leading to better health outcomes.
From ensuring that additional funding is spent in the most appropriate and effective manner, to the focus on new service models that promote collaborative working between health and care, the plan promotes not just improved care outcomes, but preventative care, that challenges the health inequalities that still exist today.
One of the key implications for the NHS, is the fact the plan contains many details with regards to ‘what’ should be achieved, but there are many questions to be answered as to ‘how’ these objectives will be achieved. Rather than seeing this as a negative, Block believes this is an opportunity for the NHS and its stakeholders to be brave and do things innovatively and differently, challenging convention and taking strides to not just improve our current models of care, but deliver care in different and ground-breaking ways, transforming healthcare forever.
Digital Opportunity
The Long term Plan focusses on far more than just technology, but without doubt the role of technology is critical. Tech UK’s ten-point plan for healthcare states, “Digital technology will play an integral role in helping the NHS meet the ambitions set out in the Long Term Plan, creating a service model fit for the 21st century.”
Block believe this will happen in a multitude of ways, from:
- The digital first agenda for primary care, providing patients with the option to engage with GP’s & primary care providers in a flexible & accessible manner, using collaboration services.
- To the importance of cloud-based technologies to enable the delivery of system wide clinical & population health management systems, ensuring greater understanding of local populations and delivering more equitable and proactive care.
Key to the success of population health is leveraging data to make informed decisions. Block believes without the requisite infrastructure to support that data; it will prove difficult to deliver an effective population health approach.
We see many key themes within the plan, set out below are some of those themes and how we believe working together with our clients, we can positively impact the NHS as it delivers the plan over the years to come.
- Delivering improved productivity: Through the removal of duplication and leveraging of cost savings brought about by NHS buying power. Block believe this provides clients with an opportunity to work with suppliers to consider more innovative procurement options as they form into ICS’s. Benefiting from economies of scale and opportunities to remove duplication and waste from the new larger integrated organisations.
- The importance of standardisation: Leading to the removal of variation, which is key to the delivery of efficiency. Block’s approach to infrastructure maturity, through our HIMSS INFRAM certification is a good example where we support clients to drive towards standards ways of working, delivering technology consistently, coherently and against a global standard.
- Organisational and service integration: A fundamental shift in the plan is the move from competition to collaboration, allowing organisations to deliver joined up care. Block’s software defined network solutions covering both local and wide area networks provide clients with the core network infrastructure to enable them to work together to deliver a robust and cohesive approach to infrastructure delivery across their new integrated care environments.
- Patient empowerment: Enabling patients to take control of their care is a key component of the plan, as it delivers a far better patient experience and ultimately improved clinical outcomes. Our collaboration solutions are just one example of the way Block provides solutions to enable patients and clinicians to interact seamlessly across organisational boundaries, creating enabled staff and engaged patients.
- The right care in the right setting: The delivery of care in the most cost-effective setting is a critical component of the plan. To achieve this, it is important for staff to have access to technology that provides flexibility, accessibility, and security in equal measure. Allowing users to seamlessly work across organisational boundaries and provide care when and where it is required. Block’s mobile clinical workspace solution provides industry leading levels of functionality to enable clinicians to treat patients in the right setting and at the right time.
It is clear to Block that innovative infrastructure will be at the heart of new models of care. Making sure it is considered from the outset, will be a key factor in delivering the vision of the Long Term Plan and working together with our clients we are sure we can deliver technology that can meet the challenges of the NHS over the coming decades.
