Each of the Acute Trusts in South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw have agreed to be the ‘host’ to lead a network for one of the five services covered in the Hospital Services Review (HSR).
The Review, published in May 2018, confirmed that a number of services are facing challenges particularly in terms of rising demand, national shortages of certain professional roles and changing ways healthcare is delivered. To address these challenges it will be essential that Trusts work even more closely together, in a variety of different ways. This includes the development of “hosted networks”.
The ‘host’ for each network are:
- Gastroenterology – Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- Maternity – The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust
- Paediatrics – Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust
- Stroke – Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- Urgent and Emergency Care – Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust have taken part in the HSR but will not host one of the five networks as they also share services with NHS organisations outside of South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw. We continue to work closely with Chesterfield.
The role of the host is to coordinate the running of the Network. It is a supportive role. The host will not be involved in providing services at other Trusts, nor will it take on any clinical or financial accountability for other Trusts’ services. The host will provide leadership through convening and facilitating shared working between the Trusts. The emphasis is on collaboration between organisations and matches the ambitions of the new NHS Long Term Plan.
Being the host for a service will not provide a Trust with an advantage or disadvantage when it comes to investment or resource allocation, beyond support for running the network itself. All services will remain equally important and there will be an emphasis on ensuring that all organisations are offering high quality care, and all staff have equal access to career development opportunities.
The hosted networks’ priorities are currently being developed by groups of clinicians, nurses, other professionals, and leaders from across the Trusts and the focus of each network will be on how Trusts can work together to:
- Standardise the approaches that we take to patient care and pathways where appropriate;
- Ensure our workforce in the short, medium and longer term have the skills and experience to meets the needs of patients;
- Look at how we can reduce, or remove the barriers that prevent us from working together more easily as organisations.
We will be keeping services in every place, retaining all of our hospitals and clinical staff. But we need to work differently, much more collaboratively, and ensure that every patient in our area gets the best care possible. The hosted networks are a vital step in us working in this new way, and keeping our NHS strong for this and future generations.
Where networks currently exist (such as the children’s Managed Clinical Networks and our Local Maternity System), these will form a central part of the new hosted networks; but the hosted networks will also include involvement from our commissioning organisations (Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs)), to ensure a shared approach right across our system.
The hosted networks will form part of the overall work of the South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Integrated Care System.
Over the coming weeks there will be more information about the membership of each Network and how staff from across the partner Trusts can become involved in the different elements of work which will be driven by the networks.