As a critical part of our Trust’s priorities for 2023/24, we have embarked on a journey to co-design a strategy that delivers outstanding patient care, enhances the experience of our people, and fosters integration and collaboration with our partners, responding to the evolving needs of our communities.

Diagnosing Our Current State

Completed in November 2023, Phase 1 diagnosed the current state of the Trust, examining the challenges with our current operating environment, evolving population health needs within our communities and anticipated changes within the health and care landscape.

This phase was crucial in understanding the challenges we face and the future needs of our patients, our people, and our partners.

This involved a comprehensive series of engagement activities with a wide range of stakeholders, consolidating these findings in our case for change.

  • Public Engagement: Over 350 responses have been gathered through a public survey and engagement activities, providing valuable insights from those we serve.
  • Internal Involvement: We have involved our people through various channels, including a dedicated online portal, site visits, focus groups and drop-in sessions. This inclusive approach has ensured the voice of our people, including over 200 individual insights from our volunteers.
  • Partner Collaboration: Continuous engagement with our commissioners and over 40 external partners through briefings, workshops, and interviews has played a pivotal role in shaping our understanding.

Key Findings:

  • We will serve an additional 125,000 people by 2029, a 2.5% increase.
    Additionally, 130,000 more people will be over 65 years old by 2029; a 12% net increase. This will place increased demands on our service, as we already see 50% of our demand coming from the over-65s age group today.
  • Our patients will increasingly become more complex, with 67% of our patients
    already having two or more medical conditions.
  • Almost 30% of our activity comes from 20% of our most deprived communities.
  • We are not sufficiently joined up with our partners to deliver integrated care;
    our role is not well defined, and we are not being used to our full potential.
  • Increasingly our patients come to us with social, urgent, or unmet care needs with
    only 13% requiring critical or emergency care, however, we send the same response and skillsets to patients with vastly different needs.

Our Case for Change:

  • The needs of our patients are changing and becoming more complex. Population growth, ageing and increased complexity will lead to a +15% growth over the next 5 years.
  • The NHS is facing significant challenges. We have a responsibility to reshape our role to support the health and social care system.
  • Our model of care no longer meets the full needs of our patients. This is adversely affecting their experience and impacting the wellbeing of our people.
  • If we continue with our current model of care, we will need to recruit an additional 600 people over the next 5 years to respond to our most critical patients in a timely manner.
  • Doing nothing is not an option, and we must radically change our approach.

Generating and Prioritising Strategic Options

Having moved into Phase 2, our focus has shifted to developing a range of strategic options, informed by the findings from Phase 1.

We are assessing these options based on their impact on patient care, the experience of
our people, service delivery, finance, and our integrated care systems.

Following extensive engagement and evaluation, our goal is to choose a direction of travel for the Trust that best meets the evolving needs of the communities we serve and supports our people in delivering care by January 2024.

This chosen option will be developed and finalised during Phase 3 (February-March 2024), ready for publication in the Spring.

 

Your Role in Our Transformation

As we navigate these changes, your involvement is more crucial than ever. We invite you to join us in this journey to shape a future that delivers outstanding patient care, enhances the experience of our people, and supports our partners.

For more information on how you can get involved contact the programme team at
strategy@secamb.nhs.uk.