The NHS Long Term Plan

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From the Overview:

In looking ahead to the Health Service’s 80th birthday, this NHS Long Term Plan takes all three of these realities as its starting point. So to succeed, we must keep all that’s good about our health service and its place in our national life. But we must tackle head-on the pressures our staff face, while making our extra funding go as far as possible. And as we do so, we must accelerate the redesign of patient care to future-proof the NHS for the decade ahead. This Plan sets out how we will do that. We are now able to because:

First, we now have a secure and improved funding path for the NHS, averaging 3.4% a year over the next five years, compared with 2.2% over the past five years; second, because there is wide consensus about the changes now needed. This has been confirmed by patients’ groups, professional bodies and frontline NHS leaders who since July have all helped shape this plan – through over 200 separate events, over 2,500 separate responses, through insights offered by 85,000 members of the public and from organisations representing over 3.5 million people; and third, because work that kicked-off after the NHS Five Year Forward View is now beginning to bear fruit, providing practical experience of how to bring about the changes set out in this Plan. Almost everything in this Plan is already being implemented successfully somewhere in the NHS. Now as this Plan is implemented right across the NHS, here are the big changes it will bring:

    • Chapter One sets out how the NHS will move to a new service model in which patients get more options, better support, and properly joined-up care at the right time in the optimal care setting.
    • Chapter Two sets out new, funded, action the NHS will take to strengthen its contribution to prevention and health inequalities.
    • Chapter Three sets the NHS’s priorities for care quality and outcomes improvement for the decade ahead.
    • Chapter Four sets out how current workforce pressures will be tackled, and staff supported.
    • Chapter Five sets out a wide-ranging and funded programme to upgrade technology and digitally enabled care across the NHS.
    • Chapter Six sets out how the 3.4% five year NHS funding settlement will help put the NHS back onto a sustainable financial path.
    • Chapter Seven explains next steps in implementing the Long Term Plan.

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