10 year health plan for England

We emphasised the overall importance of:

• using patient feedback to inform decisions about service design and development
• tackling health inequalities
• improving mental health services
• more support for people waiting for treatment
• better integration of social care services into the healthcare system

Shift 1: Moving more care from hospitals to communities

We outlined challenges around funding and infrastructure, alongside the need to change people’s awareness and attitudes towards seeking treatment from services other than GPs and hospitals.

Shift 2: Analogue to Digital

We outlined risks around digital exclusion and low digital literacy increasing health inequalities.

Shift 3: Sickness to Prevention

We outlined issues around accessing GP and screening appointments, alongside funding challenges for public health programmes.

We also presented the following ideas for change:

Quick to do

• Ensure an audit is taken of all public community buildings suitable for the transfer of health services to prevent assets being sold off or mothballed in the interim due to financial pressures in local authorities and health trusts.
• Develop health literacy resources to provide clear messaging on key topics such as preventative health measures, use of technology in health and myth dispelling.
• Ensure patients are given more information and support when waiting for specialist appointments or treatments, to prevent their health worsening in the interim.
• Steps are made to address social care needs of communities by immediately convening partnership meetings to look as issues cohesively instead of in insolation at service level.

In the middle

• Shift the public perceptions of the access point of health services being solely GP services and A&E, to wider primary care services. As outlined in our reports on community pharmacy services, awareness of these services is low amongst the public.
• Improvements are driven by a single source of patient experience data being developed to be used a local level. People engage more with sharing their experiences as visible changes are made as a result of their feedback.

Long term change

• Health literacy resources and education are fully embedded in our society, including education, skills and training to recognise and challenge misinformation.
• Changes to eradicate health inequalities have been fully implemented and a continuous process of public engagement and patient experiences has been utilised to identify and address any additional or emerging barriers people face.