Visit to Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust

Our chief executive Daniel Elkeles recently visited Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust to see the inspiring progress that is being made.

Daniel said: "Stoke Mandeville Hospital is widely known for its spinal injuries service and for being the hospital where Ludwig Guttman worked, who founded the Paralympic Games (I couldn’t resist the photo with his statue in!). But there is a quiet revolution going on in Buckinghamshire. Its integrated acute and community provider is re-orienting itself away from being a trust that primarily responds to illness, to one whose mission is to help people live healthier and more independent lives." 

Working with local GPs, the trust has helped set up six neighbourhoods (INTs) across the county, each supported by senior clinical and operational leaders. In bringing clinicians to work together in new ways they have recognised the need for a major programme of organisational development. Based on robust analysis of their populations, each INT has chosen a priority group to focus on, such as: 

🔵 Older people - pioneering ‘realistic medicine’ to prioritise interventions that extend quality of life.
🔵 Children - focusing on healthy pregnancies, childhood vaccinations and early years development.

And they are all focused on identifying the people often in the most deprived parts of the county and giving them additional support before bigger issues come to the fore. Their top priority for success: reducing the life expectancy gap between the most and least deprived areas of the county. 

"In planned care they have the ambition of eliminating outpatient appointments for some specialties including diabetes through using data and a shared care record to link consultants directly with GPs in the neighbourhoods. 

"The ambition is huge! 

"Thank you so much David, Neil, Raghuv, Bridget, Vinnesh, Gemma and Ana for a super visit."