Coronavirus (COVID-19) Cross Party Covid Recovery Steering Group presentation: 9 June 2021

Assumptions for Safe and Effective Recovery

The recovery plan is multi-faceted and relies on additional resources, including investment, and transformation of patient pathways to ensure delivery. It also assumes that demand for planned care is higher than data shows therefore improvement will be driven by clear clinical priorities to manage the backlog of waiting lists. Key assumptions include:

We will maintain a public health service including testing and vaccination

We will maintain sufficient resilience in the system to ensure we can step up services as required, including ICU beds and sufficient testing and vaccination capacity.

We will see increased demand because of backlog

Between March 2020 and 2021 activity drop by 650,000 for new outpatient appointments and 150,000 fewer inpatients and day cases. Many of these patients will present later with complications.

We will effectively increase capacity for elective services by 10%

Capacity will increase over life of the parliament for elective inpatients and day case activity by 10% based on pre-covid levels.

We will increase staffing levels by at least 1,500.

We will manage unscheduled demand to protect capacity  for electives

We will enhance urgent care services and care pathways to help avoid or reduce unnecessary attendances to hospital, allowing patients to be treated at home / closer to home.

We will renew the NHS by transforming our services

Focus will be on the needs of particular specialties and how improvement and transformation can enhance efficiency.

We have created the National Centre for Sustainability Delivery (CfSD) to support transformation safely and effectively and we will encourage boards to adopt the latest technology in renewing services.

We will bring staff, patients and stakeholders with us every step of the way

We will ensure a whole system approach to planning and delivery of community, primary, hospital and social care services.

We will ensure that citizens and service users are involved at all stages in the redesign of services.

We will continue to prioritise key services such as cancer and urgent care

Our cancer performance was maintained at 98.5% during pandemic we will continue to prioritise this.

Our urgent care performance was maintained at 91.1% in the year to March 2021, for core sites this was best in the UK.

We will support Staff wellbeing

We recognise that NHS staff need time to recover and we will introduce appropriate measures  and invest in their wellbeing.

We will support Primary Care Services

We will provide support to general practice and the wider primary and community care system.

Investment in Health & Social Care Staff

We will provide investment to support recruitment of at least 1,500 additional staff.

National Treatment Centres Capital Programme (NTCs)

Construction is currently underway for a number of the NTCs.

We have already opened phase one of the Golden Jubilee expansion and all nine new NTCs will be operational within the life of this parliament.

Elective Care

We will provide investment to support additional activity in health boards and the independent Sector to support the reduction of waiting times for patients.

Emergency care and redesign of urgent care

We will provide investment to support emergency care and redesign of urgent care to drive forward the necessary change to support effective implementation of the  whole system Unscheduled Care Programmes of work over the next five years.

Winter resilience

We will provide investment to support improved winter resilience to ensure services are maintained over winter, safeguarding urgent and routine health and social care services.

Cancer & Diagnostic Services

We will provide investment to support cancer and diagnostic services.

National Wellbeing Programme

We will provide investment to support the wellbeing of health and social care staff, including a recovery action plan to support the National Wellbeing  Programme.

Mental Health Services

We will provide a Recovery and Renewal fund to transform services, with a renewed focus on prevention and early intervention.