Involving the Public in the Long Term Plan
What is the NHS Long Term Plan?
The Long Term Plan sets out what the NHS wants to do better over the next 10 years. This includes:
- Helping people live healthier lives;
- Investing more in technology and community services;
- Getting better at looking after people with cancer, mental health, dementia, lung and heart diseases and learning disabilities, such as autism; and,
- Improving the support people need to age well and to have a strong start in life
It is up to local NHS organisations to plan how these priorities will be delivered at a local level.
What We Did
We worked with the Herts and West Essex Sustainability Transformation Partnership (STP) and you to identify the needs of local residents, and published these findings in our report - The NHS Long Term Plan: Views from Hertfordshire - which can be found below.
We wanted to understand how NHS and social care services should work and interact with local people, we also asked those with long term conditions if existing services met their needs and found out how NHS and social care services could be improved.
To do this, two surveys were undertaken. One was to gather views about how the NHS could give people more control over their health. The second was more specific, regarding how care could be improved for those with conditions the NHS has made a national priority (cancer, heart and lung diseases, stroke, diabetes, mental health conditions, learning disability and autism). To support these surveys, a workshop/focus group was carried out.
In total 355 of you shared your views and ideas on how local services could invest in the right support for our community. By sharing these views and your experiences, you ensured our local NHS plan incorporated your needs and wants for the next decade.
What You Told Us
You want future services to provide choice and flexibility of care that centres around individual needs. When asked what would be the biggest change you’d like to see to help you stay healthy, you said (in priority order):
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Timely access to help and treatment, noting long delays for some services in particular: “I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and had to wait for many weeks before my operation, even though in the meantime I had to go to A&E because of bleeding... [There] definitely should be faster response times after diagnosis.”
- Staying in your own home as long as it’s safe to do so: “I would like my healthcare to focus more on my wellness rather than my illness.”
- Being seen as an equal partner in decisions about your care and treatment: “My opinion should matter but it doesn’t.” “Above all, I would like to be listened to and given time and options for my health choices.”
- Better technology: “I worry about how data is managed, especially when you hear about how many times it is lost, misplaced, or given to the wrong person by accident.”
We also found that people with long term conditions highlighted a strong feeling of disparity between services.
Your Voice at a National Level
Through the national network of local Healthwatch, 85,000 people’s views were shared. Your views counted towards that.
Because people across England have spoken up about the improvements they want to see, Healthwatch have been able to shape the NHS’s objectives nationally, by making recommendations to the Government. Recommendations included:
- Sending a strong message about involving people in NHS decision making
- Make NHS targets more meaningful for people
- Reassert the focus on the NHS being the world’s largest learning organisation
- Build public confidence in new technology
- Listen to what people want from the future of the NHS workforce
The Government has published updated objectives for the health service, which take into account these recommendations and outline what it wants the NHS to achieve over the next 12 months.
More information can be found here:
We very much welcome the findings of the Healthwatch report, which raises a number of issues which are critically important to people’s experiences of health and social care in Hertfordshire and West Essex. To secure a healthier future for residents and develop high quality, sustainable services, we must work in partnership with the people we serve. We will ensure that the report is shared with the clinicians and professionals responsible for transforming services across our area and ask them to respond to its findings and conclusions.
Read our full report here
If you require this report in another format, please get in touch.
