Priority 3: Tackling immediate system pressures and improving resilience

What this means to me

Everyone works together to make sure I receive appropriate and timely care when I need it, from skilled and valued staff.

 

Context

As we emerge from the global pandemic, the challenges that health and care services have faced over the last decade have only increased in severity. So, while we have clear ambitions for the future, we recognise that there are some immediate pressures facing our Integrated Care System that we need to address as a priority. A failure to do so will mean a constant cycle of immediate pressures and an inability to look beyond that and invest in the future.

We are seeing increasing demand for health and care services, complexity of need and challenges around the flow of patients through the system, all at a time of significant financial pressure. Many within our workforce are tired, having moved from the pandemic to recovery of services, and now face the additional stress of increased demand, increased vacancies and higher sickness absence.

Immediate system pressures include increasing demand for urgent and emergency care, a need to restore elective or planned care as quickly as possible, a requirement to manage the impact of winter, and mental health services impacted significantly by the COVID-19 pandemic. As an Integrated Care System, we also need to be able to demonstrate that partners can plan for, and respond to, a wide range of incidents and emergencies that could affect health or patient care.

We need to work together both to reduce immediate demand on services and to secure the system capacity required to meet the current and future health and care needs of our population – which include both physical and mental health care, and social care needs. 

Traditional approaches aren’t working, and increasingly we recognise a need to do something different as we embrace the opportunity of collaborative working through our Integrated Care System.

Reducing demand on services means enabling people with complex needs to live independently at home, which we describe in more detail below. Linking to priorities 1 and 2, we also need to minimise avoidable A&E attendances through improved service access and advice upstream – particularly for those in Core20 and priority groups who are overrepresented in urgent and emergency care.
Securing system capacity and building resilience involves:

• ensuring effective system flow, by having the correct capacity, resource and processes in the system to ensure that we are able to most effectively and efficiently meet current and future service demands in a timely manner
• working to support the resilience and sustainability of the social care independent, voluntary and community sector market, including support with recruitment, quality improvement and business continuity and making best use of resources through Fair Cost of Care
• building workforce capacity by maintaining our focus on recruitment, development and support strategies to keep our people happy and safe at work
• ensuring our limited resources are consumed to best effect through our approach to financial sustainability, productivity and efficiency.

 

There are two key areas which we need to focus on in order to improve resilience and tackle system pressures. These are:

• supporting people at home
• develop, grow and invest in our workforce, culture and clinical and professional leadership.