Key questions for NHS stakeholders to consider as part of the second round of the government’s listening exercise have been unveiled by the Department of Health.

The education and training strand of Future Forum deliberations, chaired by Julie Moore, chief executive of University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation Trust, will look at incentives and accountabilities for developing the healthcare workforce.

Stakeholders will be asked how a culture of continuing professional development and academic development can be facilitated. Views on effective patient and public engagement are also being sought.

On public health, professionals and members of the public are being asked how the area can remain at the centre of the NHS, boosting outcomes, despite practitioners’ transfer to local government.

The workstream is co-chaired by Vicky Bailey, chief operating officer of commissioning social enterprise Principia, and Ash Soni, the professional executive committee chair of NHS Lambeth.

On integration, respondents are asked to consider how services can be better integrated around people’s needs.

Dr Robert Varnam, the co-chair of the work on integration, said: “We’re serious about not pre-judging an issue, imposing a particular ideology or making assumptions about an agenda. Put simply, we want to hear your answers to the big questions about improving integration.”

The workstream’s other co-chair is Hammersmith and Fulham Council chief executive Geoff Alltimes.

The use of information workstream, chaired by Professor David Haslam, president of the British Medical Association, and Jeremy Taylor, chief executive of patient group National Voices, will look at how information can be made to improve health, care and wellbeing.

Questions being asked

Education and training:

  • How can we ensure that education and training in the new system is flexible and fit-for-purpose for the new way that care is delivered and enables training beyond the job, for example stimulating a culture of continuing professional development or academic and research development?
  • How can we ensure the right balance of responsibilities and accountability and line of sight throughout the new system (for example, Health Education England and the provider-led networks, employers / professions / education sector, whole workforce) including for research training?
  • How do we best ensure an effective partnership with health, education and research at a local level?
  • How can we ensure appropriate and effective patient and public engagement in the new system?
  • How can we improve information on the quality of education and training?
  • How can we improve information on the quality of education and training and what should be the roles and accountabilities of the key players in this?

Public Health:

  • What role could NHS and health and care professionals effectively play in systematically delivering improved population health outcomes, including tackling inequalities?
  • What are the mechanisms that commissioners, providers and the wider system could use to help support professionals in improving outcomes?
  • How can we ensure that the NHS’s role in the public’s health aligns with the roles of Public Health England and local authorities?
  • How can the NHS contribute to people’s health and wellbeing in its role as a large employer?

Integration:

  • How can we take advantage of the health and social care modernisation programme to ensure services are better integrated around people’s needs?
  • We are interested in your views in this area, including:
  • What does good look like?
  • Where should services be better integrated around patients, service users and carers – both within the NHS, and between the NHS and local government services? We are particularly thinking of social care – for example, better management of long term conditions, better care of older people, more effective handover of a person’s care from one part of the system to another, etc.
  • How can integrated services achieve better health, better care and better value for money?
  • What, if any, barriers to integration should be removed, and how can we incentivise better integration of services at all levels?
  • Who needs to do what next to enable integration to be progressed in a pragmatic and achievable way?
  • How can innovation in integrated care be identified and nurtured?

Information:

  • How can information be made to improve health, care and wellbeing?
  • We are interested in your views in this area, including:
  • How can cultural and behavioural change be fostered to stimulate collection and use of data among all professionals?
  • How can we ensure information is available that enables people to take more control of their own care and enable shared decision-making?
  • How can we ensure that information supports improved care and better integration of services (for example, commissioning, research, clinical audit, public health) whilst protecting patient confidentiality?
  • How can we open up access to information and support people to use it?

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