NHS 10 Year Health Plan
The 10 Year Health Plan sets out how the government will reinvent the NHS through 3 radical shifts: hospital to community, analogue to digital and sickness to prevention.
What does it say about Healthwatch and patient voice?
'Since their inception in 2012, Healthwatch England, working with local Healthwatch organisations, has gathered detailed patient feedback and used this to influence debate around local service delivery. While this has been valuable, we need to go much further. We will bring patient voice ‘in house’ - to give it a greater profile within a reformed Department of Health and Social Care. Specifically, we will create a new National Director of Patient Experience, responsible for overseeing the collection of more informed feedback from both patients and carers - and making it publicly available. This will incorporate the functions of Healthwatch England, as well as the work on patient experience adopted by the Patient Safety Commissioner (PSC). The work of local Healthwatch bodies relating to healthcare will be brought together with ICB and provider engagement functions (chapter 5). Individual provider boards will be asked to ensure they have robust mechanisms in place to collect and use patient feedback, ensuring it is actively fed back to individual clinicians and clinical teams. This will be the norm across the NHS by 2026. Local authorities will take up local Healthwatch social care functions.' (Page 89)
The plan adds: 'They [ICBs] will need to shape commissioning plans through deep engagement with patients and the public' and will need 'User involvement functions, to ensure services meet the needs of communities'.
The plan will also:
- Allow patients to give direct feedback via the NHS App
- Abolish integrated care partnerships
- Abolish governors on NHS foundation trusts
- Introduce a new patient choice charter, starting in the areas of highest health need to 'ensure the NHS is receptive and reactive to patient preference, voice and choice'
- Pilot in certain areas during 2026 and 2027, how patient voice can directly impact financial flows, such as using CQC inspection results, patient satisfaction surveys, and experience data to directly influence payments to providers
- Update NHS complaints regulations and use AI tools to look at complaints data
What else does the plan include?
The plan sets out the following 3 big changes:
- Bringing care local into your neighbourhood, resulting in improved access to GPS and enabling hospitals to focus on providing specialist care to those who need it
- Improving and using more technology. Through the improved NHS app patients will be able to get instant advice for non-urgent care, choose their preferred provider through My Choices, manage a long-term condition through My Care or get extra care support through My Companion, allow patients to leave feedback on the care they received etc
- Helping you to stay as healthy as possible. This will include delivering on the tobacco and vapes bill - meaning that that children turning 16 this year (or younger) can never legally be sold tobacco, expand mental health support teams in schools and colleges, as well as an increased uptake of HPV vaccinations and lung cancer screening for those with a history of smoking
The full plan can be viewed here and a summarised executive summary can be accessed below.
