As the NHS faces potentially the busiest winter in history and a vacancy list of over 130,000 continues to mount, even the very best of services could find themselves in trouble.
And given how thinly spread resources are across the NHS, services often become somewhat unstable both clinically and financially, meaning some health leaders could explore the possibility of adopting alternative models of delivery. In preparation of that potential eventuality, NHS Confederation’s Acute Network Director, Rory Deighton, has been investigating what the guiding principles should be to support how the NHS engages with its stakeholders.
Rory explains in his article – fully released as part of our online magazine next month – that, firstly, health leaders are quite clear on their duty of maintaining safe clinical practice, as well as protecting staff outcomes – this matters more than anything else when it comes to service reconfiguration. He says: “The NHS should never be put in a situation where it is running services that are unsafe, that put excessive pressure on an exhausted workforce, or that cause welfare issues to arise because of concerns about how service changes may be challenged elsewhere.”
Secondly, even though it might be necessary for changes to be made without formal consultation to how service fragility affects frontline delivery, it must be clearly marked as temporary, as well as communicating the reasons and benefits of the change from the outset. Rory says: “A temporary change can help give leaders good insight on how it might work longer term, which would then form the basis of future patient involvement. However, it does not remove the need for their input and engagement at some point in the future.”
Rory will fully explain his six guiding principles of service reconfiguration before detailing the opportunity the NHS has to do better for both staff and patients alike, and what needs to happen to achieve that.
You'll be able to read his full piece in our upcoming magazine edition.
Don’t forget you can still read our current issue, which includes insight from NHS Providers’ interim Chief Executive, Saffron Cordery; NHS Property Services’ Chief Information Officer, Roslyn Churchill; Chair of the National Blood Transfusion Committee, Cheng-Hock Toh CBE, and many more.
