Launch of the Integrated Care Strategy
This week NHS Sussex is highlighting what is being done to address the issues and challenges faced across local services and the progress and improvements made for local people.
The NHS across the whole country has been under intense pressure this winter and a significant amount of work is taking place to give people the best possible care now and in the future.
Today (31 Januray 2023) the immediate and long-term priorities for improvement across services, and the health and care system, have been published. These will be the key areas of focus that will bring about the greatest benefit for local people.
It is important local people understand the issues facing health and care, what is being done to improve services, and what they can do to help themselves and others.
Context
As we all know, Health and care services across the whole country have been under increasing pressure for many years and are expected to remain very busy. Long-standing changes and improvements are needed to make sure the pressures being seen today do not become the norm or get worse. Additionally, more needs to be done to help prevent people from becoming ill in the first place and to reduce the big differences in health that exists for people living in different parts of Sussex, particularly those who are most disadvantaged.
To tackle these issues:
Immediate priorities
For the coming year (2023/24), our local system will be focusing on significant improvement across four areas that people have said matter most to them:
• Increasing access to and reducing variability in primary care services so you can get access to care quickly. Read more about the work underway to further improve access to primary care.
• Improving response times to 999 calls and reducing A&E waiting times, working with ambulance and hospital services to achieve this
• Reducing diagnostic and planned care waiting lists. This includes aiming to ensure that no patient in Sussex waits longer than 65 weeks to receive care by 31 March 2024 and to improve on this in the following years
• Accelerating patient flow through the system and discharge from hospitals. Sussex is part of a national program to see how we can do this in an innovative way.
A 5-year strategy
In addition to these immediate priorities, our NHS system has published the Sussex Integrated Care Strategy, which has been agreed by the Sussex Health & Care Assembly and all system partners. This strategy is called ‘Improving Lives Together’ and sets out an ambition for a healthier future in Sussex over the next five years. The system-wide priorities that will bring the biggest benefit to local people and services are:
• Building integrated community teams and local partnerships to respond to the needs of different parts of Sussex
• Growing and supporting our Sussex health and care workforce
• Improving the use of digital technology and information to transform our system and unleash this potential
Learn more
We encourage you to read more about the strategy and priorities.
Read more about our immediate and long-term priorities. You can read Improving Lives Together in full here.
You can also watch
Or watch some handy short videos:
Understand more about the strategy
You can find more information of the Sussex Health and Care website
