Suffolk health bosses reveal plans to help the NHS get back on track
Earlier this week the Health Secretary announced £50 million of additional funding for hospital upgrades
Suffolk NHS health bosses have revealed their plans to help the NHS get back on track and reduce the pressures they are facing.
This comes as Ministers will spend up to £200 million buying thousands of extra care home beds, to speed up the discharge of hospital patients and reduce the strain on hospitals.
Health Secretary, Steve Barclay, has also announced £50 million in additional funding for hospitals, as the government comes under intense pressure to alleviate the crisis in the NHS.
Chief Executive of the East Suffolk and North Essex Foundation Trust, Nick Hulme, told us changes to the NHS are overdue:
"The NHS was designed 75 years ago. There's nothing else that was designed 75 years ago that we still use.
"So it's time for us to look in quite a radical way at the way that we provide primary care, hospital care and diagnostic care.
"It is the best health system in the world, but it does need to change.
"It needs investment to move from some parts of the system into other parts of the system, and it needs a long-term workforce plan.
"That's the biggest risk that we face medium to long term: we simply haven't got the workforce either doing the right things because of the transformation that we need."
He told us they're making planning to make changes based on lessons learnt during the pandemic:
"Sometimes when you've worked in a very highly pressurized area, like during Covid, it's worth taking some time just to step back and think 'What are we learning? What would we do differently? What worked, and what didn't work?'
"I'm hoping that by understanding what's been happening, what's happened this year, combined with learning from COVID will start to put together a really bright future for the NHS."
What are they planning?
"We're creating additional space for people to wait before they get to A&E. We're using our outpatient area, to effectively house people in a safe space with clinical staff to release those ambulance crews to get them back on back on the road.
"I'm pleased to say we have seen some improvement in our ambulance delays on both sides (Ipswich and Colchester).
Nick told us how else he wants to streamline things in the NHS:
"The staff groups could probably be doing different things. We're spending a lot of time on admin. We're spending a lot of time writing things down.
"Do we have one member of staff that could do two or three different tasks rather than three members of staff doing one task?
"Are we flexible enough in our workforce? Are we trusting enough in our workforce?
"If you come into A&E, you give your medical history to somebody and you'll then give it to somebody else. If you get admitted, you give it to somebody else, even if you need a procedure.
"These internal processes and systems need to (be) modernised."
How can technology help?
Nick expressed a desire to harness technology in the NHS more effectively:
"Most of us run our entire lives through our smartphones and yet still get letters from our GP and from the hospital.
"So how can we use technology? How can we maximize the use of the NHS app?
"We need to look at investment in technology, encouraging people with wearable devices.
"They're so advanced now! People have smartwatches can tell them their ECG, their blood pressure and can monitor their glucose if they're diabetic. All these things are there, so we need to be a bit braver in terms of modernisation."