The NHS Long Term Plan is the first time in the NHS’ 70-year history when there will be a new guarantee that investment in the primary, community and mental health care will grow faster than the growing overall NHS budget. This will fund a £4.5 billion new service model for the 21st century across England, where health bodies come together to provide better, joined up care in partnership with local government.
The blueprint to make the NHS fit for the future will use the latest technology, such as digital GP consultations for all those who want them, coupled with early detection and a renewed focus on prevention to stop an estimated 85,000 premature deaths each year. Measures outlined by NHS leaders will help prevent 150,000 heart attacks, strokes, and dementia cases while more than three million people will benefit from new and improved stroke, respiratory and cardiac services over the next decade. Patients will benefit from services ranging from improved neonatal care for new parents and babies to life-changing stroke therapy and integrated support to keep older people out of the hospital, living longer and more independent lives.
The NHS Long Term Plan consists of seven chapters:
- Chapter One sets out how the NHS will move to a new service model in which patients get more options, better support, and adequately joined-up care at the right time in the optimal care setting, including online ‘digital’ GP consultations, and redesigned hospital support to avoid up to a third of outpatient appointments
- Chapter Two sets out new, funded, action the NHS will take to strengthen its contribution to prevention and health inequalities
- Chapter Three sets the NHS’s priorities for care quality and outcomes improvement with a focus on cancer, mental health, diabetes, multimorbidity and healthy ageing including dementia. But it also extends its focus to children’s health, cardiovascular and respiratory conditions, and learning disability and autism, amongst others
- Chapter Four sets out how current workforce pressures will be tackled, and staff supported
- Chapter Five sets out a wide-ranging and funded programme to upgrade technology and digitally enabled care across the NHS. These investments allow many of the more extensive service changes set out in this Long Term Plan. Over the next ten years, they will result in an NHS where digital access to services is widespread
- Chapter Six sets out how the 3.4% five year NHS funding settlement will help put the NHS back onto a sustainable financial path
- Chapter Seven explains the next steps in implementing the Long Term Plan. The period 2019/20 will be a transitional year, as the local NHS and its partners have the opportunity to shape local implementation for their populations, taking account of the Clinical Standards Review and the national implementation framework being published in the spring, as well as their differential local starting points in securing the significant national improvements set out in this Long Term Plan
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