Verbal report – Graham Hodkinson, Director for Health & Care.

The Director for Health & Care, Graham Hodkinson, provided the Board with an update on the Cheshire and Wirral Local Delivery System Plan (LDS). The LDS covered a wide geographical area and had built on existing improvement programmes including Heathy Wirral, Caring Together, The West Cheshire Way and Connecting Care. Members were informed that increased demand on health services coupled with an ageing population meant that if this work was not furthered there would be a £314m financial gap by 2020.

The development of the Local Delivery System Plan had provided the opportunity to consolidate these improvements. Knowledge of local challenges had been used to identify four priorities to make health and care system sustainable in the near, medium and long term.

With regard to managing care in the most appropriate setting it was reported that there would be a significant focus on prevention to help people live healthier lives and thereby reduce demand on health and care services. This would involve building on work already progressed to develop strategies to improve the management of care in areas including Alcohol related harm, Hypertension, Respiratory and Diabetes. This would enable closer working with other health and social care partners as Accountable Care Systems were developed which would allow better use of resources.

The priority of reducing variation across the system recognised that there was variation in how different health providers applied some policies and clinical pathways. This would mean that hospitals and other care providers would   develop standardised care pathways and common approaches to areas such as Infection Prevention and Control and Referral Management. In order to do this Information Technology platforms would be developed to support these improvements and to improve the management of patient pathways in a more consistent way.

It was recognised that back office functions were vital to support organisations in achieving their goals and historically many of these functions had existed in isolation although some work had been progressed to share functions such as payroll. There was an opportunity to further improve efficiency and productivity by developing collaborative working across major support functions and in some cases developing joint teams to support a wider group of health providers. This would enable the use of expertise that has to date not been shared outside individual organisations and the shared purchasing power that collaboration presented enabling a better deal from some of suppliers to be utilised.

Graham Hodkinson outlined the changes on collaborative working. A major part of this priority would be to enable healthcare providers to access shared care records in a local setting to improve patient care and experience. It was reported that this work was already well progressed and would be furthered to better utilise the use of data to support people who were at risk of developing long term conditions.

It was reported that there would health and care would also be working together more as a system and would be looking at ways in which leaders, both clinical and non-clinical could work effectively to progress priorities and to achieve a sustainable health and care system for Cheshire and Wirral.

With regard to engaging with communities and staff whilst many local health systems had already begun to engage with their communities about the challenges faced by the NHS, the development of the LDS plan enabled this engagement to be widened in an open and transparent manner. There was a commitment to engaging and communicating with communities and staff throughout and this would provide the opportunity for people to have their say on the priorities outlined as we move forward in partnership.

With regard to Cheshire and Wirral approach four priorities had been identified that would make the health and care system sustainable in the near, medium and long-term. To transform services, the need to reduce demand, reduce unwarranted variation and reduce cost had been recognised. It was concluded that for this to be comprehensibly address the areas that had the greatest impact to the system must be prioritised

Resolved – That the report be noted.