The NHS 10-Year Plan - does it go far enough?

This is the first in our series of Thought Leadership pieces in which we look at the trends and issues facing healthcare today and the solutions arising to meet these challenges.

 In this video Dr. Greg Martin renowned Consultant in Public Health Medicine, a Top Voice* speaker with over 23K followers on LinkedIn, and Sonia Neary - CEO of Wellola, a leading patient communications portal provider, discuss the three main aspects of the NHS 10-Year Plan, the backdrop of world health now and whether the plan goes far enough to meet changing population health needs.

* The Top Voices program is a LinkedIn, invitation-only group of experts across the professional world.

World Health Organisation (WHO)

The World Health Organisation recently issued a report that frighteningly stated that by 2030, which is just five years away, there'll be 11 million clinical staff shortages globally. And that about 50% of them, at least in one point in their career, suffer from burnout.

So, we really need to make some changes in the healthcare system.

The NHS 10-Year Plan – and does it go far enough?

The Plan has its critics but the main tenants that underpin it, resonate with most healthcare providers. It aims to move healthcare from:

·      Hospital to community

·      Treatment to prevention

·      From analogue to digital or Digital by Default

Hospital to Community

The move from hospital to community is fairly obvious. A lot of people when they come to hospital come because they're acutely unwell, but oftentimes they find themselves in a hospital bed a lot longer than is necessary.

🛌  43% increase in delayed discharges Jun 21 - Jan 25

🚑  70% of hospital bed days relate to chronic disease

Sonia Neary states, “If we can give the patient enough information, enough tools to understand their condition, what to do for their ongoing care, when to escalate, when it's appropriate to come into your GP or to A&E… that's the starting point. The next support layer is about educating and assisting friends and family. And then we're moving into connecting with allied health and community support.”

Throughout the NHS we're seeing a number of initiatives such as Hospital at Home, Virtual Wards, Digital Care Pathways, where patients are given options, choices around how they receive care and tools to manage care in the comfort of their own home.

Sonia Neary adds, “There's a big shift in thinking, particularly since COVID, that the care at home model is now much more acceptable in how we deliver care.  So, let's treat people in the community as much as possible.”

From Treatment to Prevention

Greg Martin comments, “The next aspect to all of this is to try and prevent people from getting sick at all. To shift to preventing sickness in the first place.”

Sonia adds, ”There is a shift to supported self-management, with distributed responsibilities around the care model. It’s not the passive engagement where something is done to the patient by an external care provider such as in hospital. It is proactive and it’s underpinned by empowerment and education. This model is more about trusting the patient, empowering the patient and their families, bringing them in earlier and further into decision making processes, where possible. This takes some of the pressure off the care providers in primary care facilities and in the community supporting that.

So, we do what can at a population health level to support people; in schools, in colleges, in work… We educate and empower them about how to better care for themselves.”

Supported Self-management

Empowering the patient with tools, resources and care pathways to manage health proactively gives:

✅ 19% fewer GP appointments

✅  38% fewer A&E attendances

✅  Better understanding

✅  Better outcomes

Digital by Default

The most positive aspect of the private sector being involved in health is that it can add technological expertise. We're seeing real solutions coming from the private sector that are making a real difference.

As the chief executive of a digital health company Sonia outlines, ”…that digital isn't for everybody. We need to recognise that not everyone has basic access to digital tools, and for those that do, some people’s preference is to present in an analogue fashion, even where the option of home-based care is possible. That said, there is a shift in attitude and expectation now, where many of us are more willing to access care via digital tools. Indeed, it’s what many of us expect as standard, given how digitally we engage with other services, in other aspects of our lives.

The NHS App is now at the centre of patient engagement as the digital front door for most English citizens; the possibility this presents is really exciting.”

Portasana® care and communications platform

Wellola provides a care and communications platform that connects with the NHS App – this feeds into the hospital electronic patient record (EPR) systems and Health Information Exchanges (HIEs).

Sonia continues, “It's all about giving people the right data, be it from a symptom tracker that the patient tracks from a wearable or medical device, or as input into patient-facing clinical assessments...this holistic view of subjective experience and objective data can really support better care delivery and clinical outcomes.

Within our system we've got a module called Virtual Care Pathways where our clients (Hospitals and Trusts) can build out digital programs for different service users, whether they've got a chronic or acute condition, a mental health or a physical health condition, so that they're guided through educational resources and tracking their symptoms; and it's bidirectional so that they can communicate with their care team when needed. With the information to hand clinicians can decide whether their patients need to come in for in-person for care or receive care in the comfort of their own homes.”

To find out more about Wellola – www.wellola.com

Or contact us at info@wellola.com

Or connect with Sonia Neary