We’re hugely excited about being able to share the wide range of new and developing health and care initiatives taking place across our region. The new Five Year Plan reinforces our aim to become the best delivery and the best transformation system in the country.
It also brings to life our ambition to reduce health inequalities, provide quality health and care services regardless of where people live and achieve more for the 1.5 million population we serve by working collaboratively and not in competition.
In the three years since we published our Sustainability and Transformation Plan, we have made significant progress in delivering our ambitions. Certainly, it is clear from my frequent visits to all of our Places that real and lasting change is starting to take effect. This was documented in our recently published Three Year Review (2016-2019) which captures the scale and breadth of our System-led improvements; introducing new nursing roles, extending GP access to evenings and weekends, setting up our Hosted Networks for key hospital services and supporting over 3000 people with long-term physical and mental health conditions to find and stay in work.
Partnership working has been integral to our success and we thank all our NHS Trusts, Clinical Commissioning Groups, Local Authorities, Healthwatch organisations, Sheffield City Region, Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network, Sheffield Hallam University, The University of Sheffield and our many excellent community support organisations in the voluntary sector. Delivering change across our health population of 1.5 million people is possible because of these relationships. We also give special thanks to the dedication and commitment of our workforce, some 72,000 staff who work across the health and care sector.
With that in mind, our new Five Year Plan is a continuation of the work that is already being delivered across health and care – and we are eager to move forward.
Building on the foundations of the NHS Long Term Plan and coinciding with the Budget tomorrow, our Five Year Plan recommits our ambition for everyone in South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw to have a great start in life, supporting them to be healthy and live longer, while aiming to be the best health and care System in the country.
We will continue to invest and address health inequality by reducing the ‘burden of illness’. We will do this by significantly reducing the number of preventable deaths and illnesses that are caused by smoking, obesity and mental illness. Moreover, we will continue to expand our digital healthcare to enable more care to be delivered in people’s homes to address pressures on emergency and urgent treatment centres. We will also invest in more mental health support for children and young people, and supporting adults through social prescribing schemes to address loneliness and inactivity.
Sir Andrew Cash
System Lead
South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Integrated Care System