A Healthier Future – delivering better care, better value, better health
A Healthier Future is our response to the national challenge to address the rising costs and demand for health of a growing and ageing population. This initiative is known as QIPP, which stands for quality, innovation, productivity and prevention. It is a programme to transform services, making them more patient focused, more effective and more efficient.
A Healthier Future – our local QIPP plan – sets out our strategic priorities to invest more in prevention; to create more support in local communities; and to offer more choice and convenience. It has been developed and is fully supported by all of our health and social care partners, who all have a key part in ensuring its success; and it is being led by clinicians – the doctors, nurses and other health professionals who work in our services.
It covers all aspects of local health and social care services. These have been divided into different streams of work, each with its own detailed plan for how we will deliver better care, better value and better health. The overall plan enables us to see how the different pieces of work link together so, for example, we can plan to have staff with the right skills working in the right places.
At more than 200 pages, A Healthier Future is a detailed and complex document. So we have also produced A Healthier Future in summary, which sets out simply and briefly the challenges we are facing and the progress we are making in transforming services.
We have put in place strong transition arrangements and are working closely with GPs and other clinicians to ensure that A Healthier Future will continue to be delivered as NHS Bedfordshire hands responsibility for local health commissioning to the Bedfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group by 2013.
Alongside our plans, we are also working with the five acute hospital trusts in the South East Midlands growth area, including our local hospitals in Bedford and Luton, on a review of acute hospital services. The aim is to ensure local health services can continue to provide safe, high quality care that is sustainable as populations grow and change.
How to get involved or comment on the A Healthier Future
If you would like to comment on our plans or find out more about opportunities to be involved as we continue to develop and implement A Healthier Future, please contact us by :
Emailing enquiries@bedfordshire.nhs.uk
Or calling 01234 897206.
The national QIPP challenge
The NHS needs to achieve up to £20 billion of efficiency savings by 2015 through a focus on quality, innovation, productivity and prevention. Savings will be reinvested in patient care by supporting frontline staff, funding innovative treatments and giving patients more choice. Find out more about QIPP on the Department of Health website at http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Healthcare/Qualityandproductivity/index.htm.