Five-year plan for healthcare launched

Earlier this year South Yorkshire Integrated Care Partnership – made up the four Local Authorities and NHS South Yorkshire - published a plan to improve people's health and wellbeing and tackle health inequality in the region.

NHS South Yorkshire has now officially launched a ‘Five Year Joint Forward Plan’, setting out the NHS’s contribution to those ambitions, at its first Annual General Meeting .

The NHS has worked locally with GP surgeries, dentists, pharmacists, community and mental health services, hospitals and ambulance trusts, local councils and the voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations.

NHS South Yorkshire also engaged with local people to create the new plan.

Last year people were asked: ‘What matters to you about your health and wellbeing?'

More than 2,500 responded with feedback including: “We want to be able to get appointments and treatment when and where we need it” and “We need it to be cheaper to live a healthy lifestyle.”

NHS South Yorkshire’s five-year plan focuses on seven key areas of healthcare in the region:

• Improving access to primary care (GPs, pharmacists, optometrists and dentists);
• Improving maternity services and services for children and young people;
• Improving access and transforming mental health services;
• Recovering and optimising cancer, elective and diagnostic pathways;
• Transforming community services;
• Improving access and redesigning specialist services for those with learning disabilities and autism;
• Recovering urgent and emergency care including developing alternatives to A&E.

Gavin Boyle, chief executive officer at NHS South Yorkshire said: “Improving the health of local people will require change in many ways, not solely in healthcare.

“We know that other factors are also important such as access to good jobs, housing, education, the environment we live in and more, which is why it’s so important we work together with our partners.

“However, the NHS has a big part to play as a provider of healthcare services but also as a large employer and institution within the region – this five-year forward plan sets out our contribution to this.”