Clinical leaders, health experts and ministers will convene in
Downing Street for an NHS Recovery Forum today (Saturday 7
January).
In addition to his regular meetings on the health service, the
Prime Minister will host the Forum to bring together experts from
across the health and care sector to identify opportunities to go
further and faster on improving performance and outcomes.
The Forum will major on four crucial issues: social care and
delayed discharge; urgent and emergency care; elective care; and
primary care.
Some of the best health and care minds in the country will use
the session to share best practice and to understand whether any
innovations developed at a local level could be applied to other
regional areas or on a national basis.
As the Prime Minister set out in his speech earlier this week,
innovation is at the heart of the government’s approach and will
be a vital aspect of the solution, and so Forum attendees will
include representatives from both the public and independent
sector to ensure we’re harnessing a wide spread of expertise and
talent.
The Forum is the next step in the significant action that the
government has taken to improve outcomes and relieve the
immediate pressures on the NHS and in social care caused by the
pandemic, with further pressures due to the recent rise in covid
and flu cases.
On improving capacity in the NHS, the government has provided an
extra £500 million to speed up hospital discharge this winter and
we’re also increasing bed capacity by the equivalent of 7,000
more beds.
The NHS is rolling out virtual wards across England, with an
ambition to establish 40-50 virtual ward beds per 100k
population, by December 2023. Virtual wards are where people, for
example, who have acute respiratory infections can actually be
treated at home with telemedicine or pulse oximeters and there is
also a new fall service which can save about 55,000 ambulance
call outs a year by treating people with falls at home.
In total, the government will invest up to £14.1 billion
additional funding over the next two years to improve urgent and
emergency care and tackle the backlog – the highest spend on
health and care in any government’s history. £7.5 billion of this
support is for adult social care and discharge over the next two
years, which will also help deal with immediate pressures.
91 Community Diagnostic Centres have been opened so far and they
have delivered over 2.7 million tests, checks and scans to help
diagnose patients earlier.
The government is also continuing to grow the NHS workforce, with
around 42,000 more staff than a year ago, including over 10,500
more nurses and almost 4,700 more doctors.
The government is investing at least £1.5 billion to create an
extra 50 million general practice appointments by 2024, while the
NHS is accelerating the rollout of new state-of-the-art telephone
systems to make it easier for patients get through to their GP
surgeries.
Earlier in the week, the Prime Minister set out one of his key
promises that NHS waiting lists will fall and people will get the
care they need more quickly. He also pledged to make sure the NHS
is built around patients.
The Forum will run for the majority of Saturday and attendees
will include chief executives and clinical leaders from NHS
organisations, local areas and councils from across the country,
clinical experts from Royal Colleges and independent sector
organisations working with health and social care services to
deliver services for patients.
The Health and Social Care Secretary, the Chief Secretary to the
Treasury, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Chief
Executive Officer (CEO) of NHS England will attend the Forum.
A Downing Street Spokesperson said:
As the Prime Minister made clear this week, easing the immediate
pressures whilst also focussing on the long-term improvement of
the NHS is one of his key promises.
That’s why we’re bringing together the best minds from the health
and care sectors to help share knowledge and practical solutions
so that we can tackle the most crucial challenges such as delayed
discharge and emergency care.
We want to correct the unwarranted variation in NHS performance
between local areas, because no matter where you live you should
be able to access quality healthcare.
