Joining up health and social care in East Sussex

Over the last few years NHS and social care partners* have been working closely together, and with wider partners, through East Sussex Better Together (ESBT) and Connecting 4 You (C4Y) to improve population health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities, by breaking down barriers between health and social care to deliver the right services, in the right places, at the right time.

*East Sussex County Council, East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust, Eastbourne Hailsham and Seaford Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), Hastings and Rother CCG, High Weald Lewes Havens CCG .

Thanks to this work we’re seeing more treatment, care and support being delivered where people want it – in their own homes or locally in their community, by teams of GPs, nurses, therapists, social workers and proactive care practitioners from both the NHS and adult social care.

This shift in the way we provide health and care means that many people are avoiding hospital altogether. And when they do need planned or urgent hospital care they’re able to see clinicians and receive treatment more quickly and spend fewer unnecessary days in hospital, with better support when they go home.

 Building on these successes

To build on these successes and strengthen our work across the county, we now plan to bring the two East Sussex programmes (ESBT and C4Y) together, to establish a single health and care programme across the whole of East Sussex.

By working in such a joined-up way, we believe we’re able to serve the whole of East Sussex even more effectively. Read our news article on the move to a single programme.

We’ll continue to monitor and develop our established projects, initiatives and services, and we’ll also work on new ideas to further improve the health and wellbeing of local people right across East Sussex.

Primary Care

Primary care is the bedrock of our health and care services. Together we’ve worked to build up local groups of GPs and health and care service in ‘localities’ or ‘communities of care’. We’ll build on this work to create primary care networks across the whole of East Sussex. These networks will help provide more proactive, personalised, coordinated and integrated health and social care services. GPs describe this as a change from reactively providing appointments to proactively caring for the people and communities they serve.

Community care

We want to further build on the services we provide in people’s homes or in the community. We’ll make sure that there are clearer pathways for people accessing community care and build on the support we provide to people after they leave hospital. We also have plans to further integrate teams of health and care staff across the county, supported by a single leadership structure.

 

Planned care

We want to make sure that those people who are referred into hospital are seen and treated as quickly as possible, especially those who are referred in for suspected cancer. There will be quicker routes to tests, enhanced technology to detect any concerns faster and one stop clinics that will bring together consultations, tests, treatment and support in one place, at one time.

 

Urgent Care

We’re building on the services already provided in our Emergency Departments to make sure that those seeking urgent care are seen by the most appropriate clinician, treated and either admitted or discharged as quickly as possible.

 

Of course sometimes people need to access health and care that stretches beyond the East Sussex, for example for specialist care.  We are also working as part of the Sussex and East Surrey Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP) on health and care priorities like mental health and maternity care. Having shared plans and priorities are important to make sure we’re approaching improvements to health and care in the most efficient way.

On this website you can:

  • Keep up to date on health and care integration and health and care news in East Sussex.
  • Find out about joint health and care events, and how you can get involved.
  • Contact us with your questions about health and care integration in East Sussex.
  • Sign up to our newsletter for a monthly round up of health and care news stories.

If you’d like further information on previous system Governance arrangements, please contact us.