NHS England publishes Business Plan 2016/17
Today (31 March) we published our Business Plan for 2016/17 which builds on three guiding principles which will shape our work in the year ahead:
- Constancy of purpose and priorities
- Coherent national support for locally led improvement
- Solve today’s issues by accelerating tomorrow’s solutions
There is strong continuity in our 10 business plan priorities for the year ahead. These reflect the main themes of the government’s mandate and embody the agenda of the Five Year Forward View. These are organised under the following themes:
- Improving health – closing the health and wellbeing gap
- Transforming care – closing the care and quality gap
- Controlling costs and enabling change – closing the finance and efficiency gap.
Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of NHS England, said: “The challenge for the National Health Service in the coming year is to raise performance in those areas most visibly under pressure – including A&E, waits for operations, and management of hospital finances. But at the same time we need real progress on critical but long neglected services, including strengthening GP care, mental health, and prevention.”
Underpinning all of our priorities are patients. To achieve what is an ambitious and challenging plan, it’s vitally important that patients remain at the centre of what we do. Our core objective remains the same – to ensure all voices are heard, especially those who have found it harder to make their opinions felt by engaging communities and patients in new ways.
Read the Business Plan for 2016/17.
2 comments
There is still no clarity or definition of what the role of pharmacy will be in these plans . NHSE define the national areas of focus and therefore could also define how pharmacy can support the NHS at local level . Eg 2 billion spent on gp consultation could be taken by pharmacy freeing up both capacity and taking pressure off GP’s so they can concentrate on managing chronic complex conditions and prevent hospital admissions .
This non defined approach leaves a largely fragmented picture locally in terms of real pharmacy integration and service commissioning locally. Time and effort is wasted on gaining engagement and buy in rather than tackling the financial deficit , patient care and access issues that the NHS faces . A clear mandate from NHSE would oblige CCG’s to leverage us better to support NHSE and most importantly for patients access to services when they need them easily .
It hurts when you say business plan. NHS is a SERVICE organisation and I feel proud to be a part of it. It is NOT a business organisation. With every new business plan, more paperwork is being generated and more targets being set up and eventually we land up doing tick box exercise forgetting what we are actually meant to do- see and treat patients, which should be our top priority. It’s high time we should take our eyes off the monitor and look at the elephant in the room.
If we build the service around the patient and do what is right for them (not necessarily expensive treatment ), we can never go wrong. I am afraid that if we build the service to ensure that proper boxes are ticked, the actual care will not trickle down to those who deserve despite having a well ticked piece of paper.