The latest Providers Deliver report, Shifting care upstream, highlights how trusts are innovating and adapting to deliver the three key shifts called for by the Government: moving from hospital to community-based care; from analogue to digital technology; and from a focus on treatment to prevention.
Through a series of case studies the report highlights how trusts are driving transformation, including:
- tackling the wider determinants of health to improve patient flow
- reducing demand for emergency care by providing support at home
- improving mental health crisis care from the ground up
- harnessing a culture of continuous improvement to deliver care in the right place.
- taking the next step from Hospital at Home to early intervention.
Chief executive of NHS Providers, Sir Julian Hartley, said: ‘This Providers Deliver report illustrates how NHS trusts and their partners are working to ensure people can access and receive the care they need in the right place, at the right time.
‘The case studies, involving a range of different trusts, demonstrate just a small selection of ways in which trusts are already aligning with the ‘three shifts' of the new government: hospital to community, analogue to digital and treatment to prevention.
‘The examples here highlight how they are really driving forward the "left shift" and increasing the amount of patient need that is being met within the community and out of hospital.
‘By working across organisational boundaries, including with primary care, and partnering with the voluntary, community, and social enterprise sector and social care, NHS trusts are better serving their local populations and achieving more for taxpayers.
‘Trusts will continue to develop fresh, forward-thinking initiatives to support people at, or closer to, their own home, and at an earlier stage of their illness.'
Sir Julian said the forthcoming 10-year Plan for health was an opportunity to develop and embed this approach but ‘national investment in and prioritisation of primary and community care to hardwire the changes we all want to see,' would be required.
