Daily Insight: The NHS's priorities to 2020

What the 5YFV did next

NHS England has published Next Steps on the NHS Five Year Forward View, setting out what the original forward view has achieved since 2015 and the NHS’s priorities for the next two years. Here’s what you need to know about the most important NHS policy document of the year:

• EMERGENCY CARE: STPs and vanguard sites will be held to account on how well they can contain the growth in A&E admissions and bed days over the next two years. New care model vanguards will be docked funding if they do not successfully reduce A&E activity
• FINANCE: The Next Steps document does not offer detailed financial plans for 2017-18, but NHS Providers has warned trusts are heading for a deficit of more than £500m next year.
• INTERVIEW: Simon Stevens says the NHS is trapped in the “reinforcing cycle” of increased demand requiring higher investment, but the delivery plan was “practical discussion” for year ahead.
• ELECTIVE CARE: NHS England has acknowledged that the service is unlikely to hit the 18 week elective waiting time target in the next two years.
• STPs: NHS England has announced the nine areas most likely to evolve into “accountable care systems”. NHS Improvement and NHS England to adopt “one stop shop” approach to regulation towards these systems.
• PRIMARY CARE: GP practices will be divided into regional hubs covering populations of up to 50,000 as part of plans to revolutionise primary care at scale in two years.
• MENTAL HEALTH: At least 150 new inpatient beds for children and young people with mental health problems will be available by 2019. The global digital exemplars for mental health have also been named.
• WORKFORCE: NHS England has said the service will need more nurses by 2020 and has announced a series of reforms to increase numbers, as well reforms to enable more flexible working.
• TECHNOLOGY: The plan outlines details of a major shake-up of how trusts will procure IT systems, under which hospitals will partner with “exemplars” to replicate their “blueprints”.

Naylor’s challenge

The Next Steps plan wasn’t the only major policy document released on Friday. Sir Robert Naylor’s review into NHS property and estates also dropped.

The former UCLH chief executive concluded that increase of at least £10bn in capital funding is required to deliver proposals in STPs and make NHS facilities fit for purpose – and this was based on a “conservative estimate of backlog maintenance at £5bn”.

However, the review also says the NHS can raise nearly £6bn itself by having a more “commercial approach” to selling land and buildings.