Elective care recovery: A shared endeavour

During the pandemic, collaboration between the NHS, patient organisations, and the life-sciences sector became vital in quickly enabling healthcare teams to adapt to unexpected new challenges.

When I look back over that period this collaboration led to some impressive achievements, but we know the pandemic still continues to have a detrimental impact on the way patients access and receive care, particularly for the 15 million people in England with a long-term condition.¹

We undertook research to help us better understand the scale of these challenges. It showed that across six LTC disease areas, there was an estimated 1.8 million missing referrals for care.² We know, from speaking to doctors, nurses who treat these conditions, and the individuals that live with them, people are living with more complex needs as a result.

So, what is to be done? We need look no further than integrated care systems to see that structurally a lot is changing to enable new healthcare models. ICS’s by their very nature bring organisations together to plan and deliver joined up services to improve an individual’s access to, experience of, and outcome from the NHS. Collaboration by design.

I believe collaboration can go further. I spoke to an ICS leader recently and was told “it’s about outcomes. Focus on outcomes” and by doing so the NHS and industry can focus on shared objectives. And I have been challenging my leaders to think in this way. We recognise that our innovative medicines first and foremost help keep people out of hospital. That improves health and releases NHS capacity. But we can do more.

Just one example we are exploring is how we can support clinical teams, who tell us they are spending too much time seeing healthy and well individuals during routine appointments, restricting their time to focus on those who are complex and managing less well. And so, with our specific disease expertise, we’re evaluating how patient led assessment tools could help services and the remote, virtual, monitoring of patients outside of hospital. We have other examples, collaboratively developed with NHS teams, in telemedicine, triage services and home testing. If we can show these types of initiatives work and help cut down waiting lists quicker, we can scale.

From what I know, this is what the NHS’s elective recovery “Super September” challenge is all about. I also know cross sector working isn’t always as easy as we think it should be, but it’s clear to me, listening to the insights of frontline staff, that it will once again take collaboration like this to help individuals access the best care once more.

References

1. NHS England. House of Care. A framework for Long term condition care. Available at: https://www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/clinical-policy/ltc/house-of-care/#:~:text=The%2015%20million%20people%20in,primary%20care%20budgets%20in%20England. 

2. Carnall Farrar. The impact of Covid-19 on long-term conditions in the UK. March 2021. https://www.carnallfarrar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/impact-of-covid-on-ltcs-cf-research.pdf.