No hospital is an island
19 January 2018
NHS Providers chief executive Chris Hopson today welcomed a report on hospital collaboration that is improving patient care while addressing significant efficiency and workforce challenges.
Chris Hopson said: "There’s a great deal of exciting innovation going on inside the NHS, much of it being driven by the new care model vanguards.
"We’ve tended to focus on vertical integration which is bringing together primary care, social care community, mental health and acute hospitals in a single area.
"This NHS England report No hospital is an island concentrates on horizontal integration, where providers of the same type are working together, to improve their efficiency, tackle real workforce challenges, and ensure care quality. I believe there is much system leaders can learn from these acute care collaborations.”
There’s a great deal of exciting innovation going on inside the NHS, much of it being driven by the new care model vanguards.
No hospital is an island is drawn from the progress made by 13 acute care vanguards that were launched in September 2015 to redesign services. It includes details of how collaboration was implemented across three broad models.
- Hospital groups – a number of providers working together under a single group structure
- Multi-service networks – a number of providers working together on a range of clinical and non-clinical services
- Single service networks – networks of trusts and clinicians working on a specific service.
Six common strategies are emerging from these vanguards that cover:
- standardising clinical practice, pooling expertise, sharing vital patient information and analysing patient care across hospitals
- making better use of clinical support services, such as imaging and pathology
- more creatively and flexibly using the skills of their healthcare professionals, reducing reliance on agency staff
- building innovative external partnerships with, for example, the pharmaceutical industry
- supporting more integrated health systems that champion person-centred care
- consolidating corporate support functions to generate efficiencies.
A number of case studies from the vanguards demonstrate progress against these goals. However, evaluation on measurable benefits is still ongoing as many of the vanguards are still at an early stage of implementation.
Chris talks more about the report