National NHS leaders have today (Thursday) set out steps to strengthen collaboration across the NHS and ensure that local health and care areas are successful in delivering their blueprints for the future. Published by NHS England and NHS Improvement, Delivering the Forward View: NHS Operational Planning Guidance for 2017/18 and 2018/19 provides NHS trusts and […]

Local and national leaders from across the health service are to come together to discuss NHS plans for 2016/2017 and the delivery of the Five Year Forward View. NHS provider chief executives and CCG accountable officers are being invited to join the leaders of national health and care bodies – including Simon Stevens, CEO of […]

GPs and pharmacists have helped cut opioid prescriptions in England by 450,000 in under four years, latest data shows, as the NHS today unveils a new action plan to crack down on the overuse of potentially-addictive medicines. The new framework for local health and care providers aims to further reduce inappropriate prescribing of high-strength painkillers […]

To: CCG accountable officers ICS and STP leaders NHS trust and NHS foundation trust chief executives Dear Colleague Integrated care systems: next steps The whole country is rightly proud of the way the NHS has responded so swiftly and magnificently to coronavirus, the biggest public health emergency in its history, from the rapid implementation of […]

Thanks to improved NHS cancer care, over two thousand more people are this year able to enjoy Christmas with their families. Survival rates have never been higher and the gap between the best and the worst areas is also closing. Areas with historically lower survival rates are closing or have caught up with average survival, […]

NHS England has today published detailed plans – drawn up with family doctors and pharmacists – to cut out prescriptions for ineffective, over-priced and low value treatments. Helping to trim hundreds of millions from the nation’s rapidly growing drugs bill will create headroom to reinvest all savings in newer and more effective NHS medicines and […]

Jennie Walker marks the one year anniversary of the seven Maternity Choice and Personalisation Pioneer sites being announced, and explains why this is an important and formative time for Local Maternity Systems (LMS) across the country.  We are now in a fortunate position to learn from the Maternity Choice and Personalisation Pioneers’ experience to date […]

NHS England’s Medical Director for Acute Care explains how Urgent Treatment Centres are key to new plans to ease pressure on A&Es: NHS England has announced plans for a modernised and improved urgent and emergency care service for the future. As outlined in the Next steps on the Five Year Forward View document, over the […]

We take a look back at a few of the highlights of our work over the last twelve months. January Back in January we announced that the first NHS hand transplants to be performed this year and by July the BBC were reporting how Chris King from Doncaster, who lost both his hands in an […]