Our five year plan

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The NHS is currently facing significant challenges. Financial pressures, coupled with an increasing demand for services means we have to transform the way we deliver services to ensure we are providing high quality care that puts service users first.

To help prepare the organisation for the challenges we will face we have put together a detailed five year plan that explains how we aim to face these challenges over the next five years.

Earlier this month we submitted these plans to the independent health sector regulator, Monitor.

A five year plan is something that all NHS organisations have to provide – our plans support our mission to enable people to reach their potential and live well in their community.

It reflects the need to develop new ways of working with service users, carers and our partners to help us grow and ensure we use our skills and facilities to best effect.

Quality (including safety, outcomes and service user experience) is a key theme in the plan. We also discuss our plans to deliver the cost improvements we need to make.

The key message of our plan is that the work we do focuses on the needs of our service users. It supports the things that people have told us are important – for example, person centred integrated care, a focus on potential and recovery, bringing care closer to home and the use of technology.

In brief, our five year plan outlines that we need to:

  • Maintain service quality, data quality and productivity
  • Plan carefully for services to ensure changes are scalable across a bigger geography – in a few years’ time our services might look very different
  • Make sure our overheads are competitive
  • Use information and technology to transform the way we work – more agile working, real time updating of clinical records, integration of key clinical systems – and to drive efficiencies
  • Roll out telehealth and telecoaching services and help more people access our services through the use of technology

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Some of the key areas that will change for our staff are:

  • Movement from a professionally driven model to an enabling, person centred, recovery focussed approach
  • Move towards seven day access to services where required
  • Ensuring safe staffing levels on wards
  • Flexible working

We will ensure that our estates are used to their full potential, we will:

  • Develop a community infrastructure
  • Improve our inpatient environments
  • Explore the shared use of building with partners
  • Dispose of surplus buildings that divert money away from the delivery of clinical services.

As part of the plan submission, our Board had to declare whether the organisation will be financially, operationally and clinically sustainable (according to current regulatory standards) in one, three and five years’ time.

Our assessment of the local health and social care economy is that no current NHS provider (including our Trust) will be able to certify that they will be in a sustainable position in five years’ time. Other providers are also indicating this.

For our Trust to remain sustainable for three years we need to:

  • Maintain high quality local services, but ensure an increased reliance on self-directed support and self-care.
  • Deliver efficiencies in the workforce, service models and infrastructure
  • Create alternative capacity through, for example, recovery colleges and creative minds initiatives.
  • Develop our core service offer across a bigger area e.g. West Yorkshire or Yorkshire and Humber for specialist services
  • Look for the right partners at the right level to support integrated service delivery

If we get our services right, with a clear offer defined through our service change/transformation programme, we will be in a strong position going forward.

Our five year plan

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