July was a month of milestones as we marked health and care anniversaries and published plans on how we’ll support your wellbeing for the next five years.
On 5 July we not only celebrated the 75th anniversary of the NHS and the one-year anniversary of our Sussex Integrated Care System (ICS), but health and care partners in Sussex also launched a new five-year improvement plan for health and care.
The improvement plan, called ‘Our Plan for Our Population’, sets out how the Integrated Care System will work to improve health and care for people across Sussex.
Our Integrated Care System brings together the local NHS, local authorities, and a wide range of others, including voluntary and community organisations, from across East Sussex, West Sussex and Brighton and Hove. We work together to improve health and care for our residents.
It’s the first time there’s been a single long-term improvement plan for the whole of Sussex, so we can jointly focus on bringing the greatest benefit to local people. We want to help you to live healthier lives for longer and make sure you have access to the best possible services when you need them.
The plan builds on, and supports, the Health and Wellbeing Strategies we already have in place across East Sussex, West Sussex, and Brighton and Hove, which focus on the local priorities for improving health and wellbeing across our diverse populations. You can read our East Sussex plan here: Healthy lives, healthy people
What the plan means for you
The plan is known within our system as the ‘Shared Delivery Plan’ and partners will work closely together to make improvements in a range of priority areas, including the long term commitments made in the Sussex Improving Lives Together Strategy Our strategy – Sussex Health and Care.
Over the coming year immediate improvements will be made to:
- Improve access to GP and dental services
- Improve response times to 999 calls and reducing A&E waiting times so the sickest patients get the emergency care they need as quickly as possible.
- Reduce waiting lists for diagnostics and planned operations.
- Speed up discharge from hospitals.
- Improve care for those facing mental health crisis and access to support for children and young people.
We’ll also develop new ways of working over the longer term to help people live healthier lives overall. These include:
- Creating integrated community teams – helping teams in different health and care organisations work together to deliver services in a more joined-up way, to better meet the needs of local communities.
- Initiatives to grow and develop the health and care workforce to help them have the support and skills needed, and to attract new people into health and care jobs.
- Improving the use of digital technology and information to join-up services and help people access care more easily.
To support the improvements, we’ll continuously work on reducing the differences in health for those who are most disadvantaged; strengthening clinical leadership across services; getting best use of the finances available; and improving services and support for those with mental health issues, learning disabilities and autism.
Want to know more?
Read more about the new Sussex wide plan here: Our plan for our population – Sussex Health and Care (ics.nhs.uk)
Keep an eye out on future issues of our newsletter for updates on how we’re taking these plans forward to join up health and social care in East Sussex.