City to simulate neighbourhood health service

In an announcement shared with HSJ, NHSE London’s nursing and medical director said the “simulation exercise with health and care partners across London is an important step on our journey towards delivering this exciting vision” of neighbourhood health.

Developing a “neighbourhood health service” was promised in Labour’s election manifesto last year and is due to form a significant part of the government’s 10-year plan.

The simulation test, scheduled for May, is being jointly funded and developed by consultancy PPL, the capital’s NHS providers and integrated care boards, and the London Health & Care Partnership.

The project is being developed with support from NHSE and the Department of Health and Social Care, which are jointly developing national NH policy.

NHSE London’s Karen Bonner and Chris Streather, regional nursing and medical director respectively, said in a statement: “Bringing together different services into neighbourhood health teams to best serve the needs of their local community, we can make sure that Londoners are getting the support they need in the most appropriate place for them, preventing ill-health, reducing health inequalities and, ultimately, keeping London’s population healthier.”

The simulation day will seek to establish how NH services would operate across the region — including the impact on wider services — and build on work already done in small patches in London. 

PPL said the “findings and evaluations captured from the London simulation will help inform the development of neighbourhood health service arrangements regionally, and transition from policy to implementation nationally”.

It is developing a “target operating model” for NH in London, which it said was “a ‘whole-population’ model of care bringing together psycho-social and bio-medical support”.

PPL joint chief executive Simon Morioka told HSJ the work would “share best practice and test ways of working at a bigger scale”, and look at the impact on patients “who understandably don’t fit in neat boxes”, such as those who use services across several parts of London. 

Participants will be asked to respond to different scenarios. Claire Kennedy, also PPL joint chief executive, said the simulation would see leaders “almost practice those conversations” across organisational and service boundaries “within a space which is time-bound, so things that would normally take several weeks or months, we can condense into a much shorter time period”.

She added: “It’s about asking how we can take these policies and ideas, and play around with them in a way which allows people to really experience what the behaviours would look like.”