COLUMN: Five year plan to transform services

It describes how health and care services will need to change to deliver better quality care, improve health and wellbeing and bring our health and care system into financial balance.

As part of this we’re developing the ULHT 2021 strategy – a five year plan to transform our services for the benefit of patients, staff and the population of Lincolnshire.

Our strategy is closely aligned to the STP to ensure a co-ordinated approach.

Some of the many challenges we face are the increasing demand on services due to an ageing population with long term complex health conditions, replicating services on multiple sites as well as the recruitment of doctors and nurses to facilitate this.

We’re treating too many people in a hospital environment rather than providing care and support in the community.

Keeping all services as they are isn’t an option and we need to redesign the system.

We want patients, staff and the public to be involved in shaping the future and for your voice to be heard.

We’ve identified five areas of work within our strategy that need closer review including:

How we redesign clinical services and pathways; How we make our hospitals more productive; How we improve recruitment and retention of staff; How we can make the best use of our estate and work more efficiently; How we improve quality even more.

We’ve developed a survey so you can share these views with us: www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/98SZWMW.

l Dr Suneil Kapadia is the Medical Director of United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust.