HSJ 9 December 2015
Comment by Lord Prior (minister for NHS productivity)
Extracts:
"The changes envisaged within the Five Year Forward View are more fundamental and ambitious than any changes the system has witnessed since 1948. We must have a care system that can meet the demands of our population today, very different from some 70 years ago.
We must do this within the structures we currently have. Reorganisation would be a distraction.
There are two main ways of ensuring we deliver on our promise of transformation.
One is to shift care from acute settings to out-of-hospital settings, reversing a trend we have witnessed since the early 2000s – of policy decisions driving activity and resources into acute providers, not primary and community care.
We have to improve the allocative efficiency of the system by providing the right care in the right place at the right time. This can be achieved through a mixture of prevention activities – targeting for instance, the rise of obesity and diabetes – and better commissioning of services as well as through new, innovative models of care provision, the vanguards.
The second main way of delivering transformation is to improve productivity. Trusts around the country are already working with Lord Carter to identify variation and to describe the “model hospital”. This will lead to greater standardisation of best practice, improved workflow and rostering, and decreased dependency on agency staff. In the absence of a market, we need intelligent transparency to reveal variation and drive improvement.
The transition from Monitor and Trust Development Authority to NHS Improvement under the leadership of Ed Smith and Jim Mackey is crucial to all this. It is not just about bringing together the two organisations, it’s creating a new organisation with a new purpose: to support providers to improve. "
"The changes envisaged within the Five Year Forward View are more fundamental and ambitious than any changes the system has witnessed since 1948. We must have a care system that can meet the demands of our population today, very different from some 70 years ago.
We must do this within the structures we currently have. Reorganisation would be a distraction.
There are two main ways of ensuring we deliver on our promise of transformation.
One is to shift care from acute settings to out-of-hospital settings, reversing a trend we have witnessed since the early 2000s – of policy decisions driving activity and resources into acute providers, not primary and community care.
We have to improve the allocative efficiency of the system by providing the right care in the right place at the right time. This can be achieved through a mixture of prevention activities – targeting for instance, the rise of obesity and diabetes – and better commissioning of services as well as through new, innovative models of care provision, the vanguards.
The second main way of delivering transformation is to improve productivity. Trusts around the country are already working with Lord Carter to identify variation and to describe the “model hospital”. This will lead to greater standardisation of best practice, improved workflow and rostering, and decreased dependency on agency staff. In the absence of a market, we need intelligent transparency to reveal variation and drive improvement.
The transition from Monitor and Trust Development Authority to NHS Improvement under the leadership of Ed Smith and Jim Mackey is crucial to all this. It is not just about bringing together the two organisations, it’s creating a new organisation with a new purpose: to support providers to improve. "
