News

Placing patients at the heart of the business plan to improve care and access for all

NHS England today published a plan confirming our commitment to putting patients at the heart of improving care now and for future generations.

Putting Patients First: the NHS England business plan for 2013/14 – 2015/16 is a three-year plan that will measure how health and care services are performing, with a strong emphasis on making sure feedback from patients, their families and NHS staff is heard and acted upon.

The plan includes an 11-point scorecard, which NHS England will introduce for measuring performance of key priorities, including feedback from patients, their families and NHS staff. This supports the recommendations made by Robert Francis QC to drive forward improvements by putting patients at the heart of the NHS.

The publication of the plan comes alongside the launch of the NHS Friends and Family Test. From this month, patients will be asked whether they would recommend hospital wards and A&E departments to their friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment.

Professor Malcolm Grant, chair of NHS England, said: “Recent events have demonstrated the need for constant vigilance to ensure consistently high standards of care across the NHS and to pick up possible failures at an early stage. This is why we have placed quality care at the heart of everything we do.

“The key test is whether patients would recommend their local NHS care and if NHS staff feel positive about what they are doing.”

The 11 key priorities on the scorecard are:

  • Satisfied patients
  • Motivated, positive NHS staff
  • Preventing people from dying prematurely
  • Enhancing quality of life for people with long-term conditions
  • Helping people to recover from episodes of ill-health or following injury
  • Ensuring people have a positive experience of care
  • Treating and caring for people in a safe environment
  • Protecting them from avoidable harm
  • Promoting equality and reducing inequalities in health outcomes
  • NHS Constitution rights and pledges
  • Becoming an excellent organisation
  • High-quality financial management

The business plan outlines eight key areas that will be used to ensure NHS England delivers on the 11 priorities: supporting, ensuring and developing the commissioning system; direct commissioning; emergency preparedness; partnership for quality; strategy, research and innovation for outcomes and growth; clinical and professional leadership; world-class customer service and developing commissioning support.

The eight activities span the commissioning system (the planning and buying of services), from national to local level and make it the responsibility of everyone in the NHS to ensure the best care and outcomes for patients.

Putting Patients First: the NHS England business plan for 2013/14 – 2015/16 builds on Everyone Counts: Planning for Patients 2013/14, NHS England’s earlier planning guidance, which was published in December 2012.