In this Health and Wellbeing blog Lisa Taylor, Health and Wellbeing Director at VONNE & VCSE Partnership Programme Lead for the North East and North Cumbria, shares the main themes and her reflections of this year's NHS Confed Expo conference from a VCSE sector perspective - including Neighbourhood Health, strategic commissioning, partnership working, digital, data, workforce and more...
On Wednesday 10th June, I was lucky enough to be able to attend this year's NHS Confed Expo - England’s largest health conference, spanning 2 jam-packed days with over 7,300 attendees and over 200 sessions across 23 stages, featuring 600 speakers.
There was a huge emphasis on Neighbourhood Health, which had its own stage, and was mentioned across all areas of work. Digital, workforce and estates were cited as areas in which development is needed if neighbourhood working is to be a success, as well as building a culture of trust where joined up care is paramount.
The shift in function for Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) to strategic commissioners was also high on the agenda, with NHS England Chief Executive Sir Jim Mackey making reference to this in his keynote speech. Sir Jim also noted how much has happened this past year, reflecting on the publication of the NHS 10-year Health Plan and industrial action that has taken place over the past 12 months, reflecting that there is no place for racial or cultural intolerance within the NHS - which was reassuring to hear given current tensions across society - and highlighting the real progress that has been made with elective waiting lists and the improvement in public perception of the NHS.
Acknowledgement was made by Sir Jim that the changes announced last year could have been handled better, which feels like an understatement given the impact that has been felt upon our health colleagues as well as our own VCSE organisations, services and our communities. He announced that there will be an increased focus on corridor care, and that the creation of Neighbourhood Health Hubs and community delivery of health services will need to ramp up throughout this coming year.
A strong theme throughout the day was partnership working, whether this is between GPs and hospitals, or health, local authorities and the VCSE sector, or by utilising patient voice to help identify local need and create more positive experiences of healthcare. There was a real sense that partnership is going to be key to moving forward towards better outcomes for patients and for the “left shift” – moving care away from hospitals into communities, focussing on prevention rather than treatment, and moving away from the analogue systems of the past into the digital systems of the future. There was no sense of how this is going to be funded, other than moving the same money around the system and taking advantage of cost savings made by efficiencies and lower use of acute services because of earlier health interventions, although this does have the potential to create pockets of money it is difficult at this point in time to see how it will fund the vast array of change needed. This was a common thought for health and VCSE colleagues alike. It feels important to note that budget size is impacted by all government priorities and is not fully within the control of NHS England.
Data plays a huge part in the whole of the health system, including within the new role of ICBs, with population health data being used to support the identification of local and hyper-local priorities. The drive is for data to inform commissioning, with huge focus on data quality and quantity. However, there was the acknowledgement that it is unwise to rely solely on it, with one speaker stating that “data is the most dangerous 4 letter word,” highlighting that health inequalities can be overlooked if systems are only concentrating on high intensity use. Digital solutions were also mentioned many times, and technology is moving at a rapid pace with some exciting new developments happening to support more efficient ways of working, as well as improvements in medical experience for patients.
One thing that really stuck out for me was the mention of the VCSE sector in almost every conversation – there is a real awareness that our input is vital for key areas of work such as neighbourhood health, and health inequalities often need our input to be properly addressed. It feels like the coming year will test whether the NHS is willing to act upon this by ensuring, not merely recommending, that the VCSE sector has a place not only within the delivery element of neighbourhood health, but at strategic planning level, and whether there is the will or the ability to adequately fund our input into the health system.
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