Jan Sobieraj: Have your say on our five-year plan to transform healthcare in Lincolnshire

By Jan Sobieraj JanSobieraj

Towards the end of last year the Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) was published for Lincolnshire. For the first time we have a single plan that describes how health and care services across the whole county will change in order to deliver better quality care, improve health and wellbeing and bring our health and care system back into financial balance.

As part of this work we are developing the ULHT 2021 strategy which is our own five-year plan to ensure we transform and further improve our own services.

Keeping all services as they are is not an option and we need to redesign the system by supporting people to make healthy choices and stay well.

The challenge we face in Lincolnshire and nationally is that demand is increasing on our services due to an ageing population with long term, complex health conditions.

We currently spend too much money on treating people in hospital rather than providing support in the community to prevent people needing hospital care.

2021 is our chance to transform our services for the benefit of our patients, staff and the population of Lincolnshire.

As mentioned in my December column, we really want our patients, our staff and the public to be involved in shaping the future and for your voice to be heard. Without input from our patients, public and staff we can’t improve, as these groups know what we do well and what we could improve better than anyone else.

We have already started engaging with our patient members and have had discussions with over 670 people at 31 community groups on this. At our centralised locality forum meeting recently we had in-depth debates with over 50 people on our 2021 strategy, and we want to do more of this.

We’ve discussed what services they think should be centralised and what should be delivered locally. We’ve also asked what ideas they have about how we can deliver services differently.

We have identified five areas of work, and need your help to develop the options for what we do. They are:

• Redesign our clinical services: clinical strategy, clinical services and pathways
• Productive hospital: urgent care, elective work, theatres and outpatients
• Workforce and organisational development: recruitment, retention, education, training and skills, leadership development, appraisals, inclusion, values and behaviours
• Productivity, efficiency and estates: how we can work smarter, save money and improve care
• Quality Improvement: patient safety, safe staffing, reduced mortality, infection control

As part of this work we have also have developed a survey so people across Lincolnshire can share their views with us, and help us to develop our plans for the future of hospital services across Lincolnshire.

The deadline to complete this is Monday, April 10, 2017.

ULHT has a positive future. We want to improve the quality of care to our patients and improve the experiences of our staff while at work. Our staff will have exciting opportunities and access to training. They will also have a key role to play in shaping what these roles will be.

More information on the STP can be found here.

Jan Sobieraj is the new Chief Executive of United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust.