Planning guidance full coverage: next steps for the forward view

Planning guidance for the NHS in 2015-16, published this afternoon, reveals NHS England wants to set up a cohort of health economies that can develop “prototypes” of new care models such as primary and acute care systems, and multispecialty community providers.

The guidance, The Forward View into Action, says those sites chosen to be in the “vanguard” must already have a record of “tangible progress” to new ways of working over the past year and positive relationships between commissioners and providers.

The selected areas will receive investment from the transformation fund, announced earlier this month as part of the chancellor’s autumn statement.

A support programme will be co-developed rapidly with the initial sites which aims to “blend the provision of technical expertise with peer learning, and removal of barriers to change”, the document said.

It said that in order to allow all areas to focus on moving towards the new models of care, there are few new national requirements for planning in 2015-16. Organisations should only need to “refresh” their plans for 2015-16. However, it stressed commissioners and providers must have “aligned realistic activity and financial assumptions”.

In particular it says areas must have “realistic ambitions for activity diversion initiatives”.

It added: “Unless and until it is clear that demand has reduced, we strongly advise system resilience groups not to switch off additional winter capacity for urgent and emergency care.”

The guidance was published jointly by NHS England, Monitor, the NHS Trust Development Authority, Public Health England, Health Education England and the Care Quality Commission.

The key new requirements and initiatives set out in the document are:

• clinical commissioning groups must increase their spend on mental health by at least as much as the increase in their allocation;
• new commissioning for quality and innovation payments for treatment of sepsis and acute kidney injury, which replaces the requirement to report patient safety thermometer and friends and family trust data, will become part of the national contract;
• a new CQUIN on improving urgent and emergency care;
• a “revitalised” national quality board to review the current state of quality of care and barriers to delivery of high quality care;
• a new workforce advisory board, chaired by Health Education England with senior membership from across the system, to develop a health and care workforce with the skills to support the implementation of new models of care;
• providers and commissioners to agree plans to make further progress towards seven day working; and
• CCGs and providers to agree plans to improve antibiotics prescribing in secondary and primary care.

Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, said: “Today we are allocating extra cash for towns, cities and villages across England to help the local NHS meet the rising demands and changing needs of the patients we’re all here to serve.

“Frontline nurses, doctors and other staff are working incredibly hard, including over this holiday period, but with a growing population and an aging population it’s clear the health service can’t just keep running to catch up. Instead we need to begin to radically reshape the way we care for patients, which is why there is such widespread support and enthusiasm for the NHS Five Year Forward View.”