Seven day services debate continues at London conference
THE NHS Services, Seven Days A Week Forum’s Project Manager, Deborah Williams, is today addressing a major conference on 24/7 care.
The conference, entitled Improving Care, Safety, Outcomes and Productivity Through Delivering a 7 Day Health Service, is being chaired by Dr Janet Williamson, NHS improving Quality’s Director of National Improvement Programmes and also a member of the Forum which is due to report its findings later this autumn.
The conference comes after the recent successful 7-Day Services workshop that was staged ahead of the inaugural NHS England Board meeting, giving the public another chance to give their views on seven day services.
The workshop concluded: “If you were starting the NHS from scratch, 7-Day Services would be taken as read,” and it also told the Forum: “Be ambitious for the future and not constrained by the past.”
Staged at the Hallam Conference Centre in London, delegates are today getting an update from NHS England on the crucial stage its five work streams have reached in gathering evidence on what needs to happen if seven day services are to be delivered.
Deborah Williams will tell the conference: “We need to start talking about services and better access to them for patients, instead of talking about beds and buildings.
“We need to know more about what our patients think of the services we commission and act on the information in the way we design and deliver them.”
The conference will include sessions focusing on the practicalities of changing to seven day health services including delivering national clinical quality standards seven days a week and the challenging issue of implementing the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges’ standards on seven day consultant present care.
The conference continues with case studies from organisations that are already delivering whole systems seven day health and social care services, and practical sessions on provider and service models, ensuring support services are in place, employment law and contracts, commissioning seven day services and delivering seven day social care services.