Today marks the launch of “The Big Healthcare Issue”

I’m excited to be launching a newsletter tackling some of the biggest challenges our healthcare systems face today. Tapping into the expertise and experiences of leaders from our industry, this newsletter will be essential reading (and viewing) for everyone in a position of leadership in the healthcare and social care industries.

Please do subscribe and I’ll look forward to engaging with you via the comments with each new edition we publish.

Background to today’s launch

“ICSs are a revolution in the mindset, not just a reorganisation of services.” (NHS Confederation Report - The state of integrated care systems 2021/22, Feb-22).?

Our NHS and health and social care system now face even bigger challenges exacerbated by the pandemic from both quality issues and financial pressures which threaten to rapidly become overwhelming without urgent intervention and support.?

For decades the approaches taken to balance the often competing priorities of quality, performance standards, and money has been to lurch from one to the other, at each other’s cost, which have made the short-term improvements, driven by political pressures and election cycles, unsustainable. The idea that quality always costs more money or that cutting costs sharply will not lead to deterioration in the quality of care provided to patients is fundamentally flawed. The evidence shows that quality almost aways goes hand in hand with healthy finances. Why? Because efficient patient care pathways ensure high standards of care are provided by high performing innovative teams and great leadership that fosters the right collaborative culture and staff morale underpinned by ownership and accountability.?

The Big Healthcare Issue is a forum to discuss the big issues in Health and Care – for having the conversations where we ask the Qs that really matter, share ideas, and develop practical solutions to deliver transformation change and help solve some of the big challenges our healthcare system faces which threaten to rapidly become overwhelming without urgent intervention and bringing in additional capacity and capability to support an exhausted workforce.?

The Big Healthcare Issue is born from my experience of working on saving this ‘burning health platform’ that we all stand on -?

The first Big Q we are asking to set the scene in our launch edition –?

‘Will Integrated Care Systems (ICS) join the dots to transform Health and Care to deliver better Quality and Financial outcomes within our lifetime?’

The BHI content is co-created and co-produced in collaboration with its community of contributors who share a common passion of making a difference with transformation improvement ideas translated into practice at an affordable cost to help solve the big problems facing our healthcare system.??

Key contributors to the BHI are decision-makers, opinion-makers, and policy shapers that include –?senior NHS and Private Healthcare CEOs and other leaders, Social Care CEOs and other leaders, Chairs, Medical Directors, NHS Trust Board Advisors, NEDs, Ministerial Advisors, Digital Health Entrepreneurs, and Voluntary Sector organisations.?

Some additional context

People too often receive fragmented care from services that are not effectively co-ordinated around their needs which can lead to poorer outcomes, inefficiency and wastage. Integrated care – joining up services within the NHS and across health and social care – has the potential to improve all of this.?

But, we have been talking about integrated care for over two decades, and progress delivering it has been very slow. Now 42 integrated care systems (ICSs), have been put on a statutory footing from 1 July 2022, to bring together providers and commissioners of NHS services with local authorities and other local partners to collaborate in planning and delivering health and care services across the country.?

Previous attempts do not provide much confidence. In England, sustainability and transformation partnerships (STPs), the predecessors to the ICSs, took an extended period of time and delivered limited results.??

So, what will be different this time??

The success of ICSs will be determined by their ability to deliver better quality of care and value for money for patients through collaboration and joined-up partnership working. That will require ICS to develop the right behaviours, shared values, trusting relationships and the correct incentives.?

Ultimately, the ‘right’ leadership is paramount in creating the culture that is needed to make ICSs work.??

Some of the Big Healthcare Issues we are discussing are:

• ‘Integrated Care Transformation: What is Right Care? How do we provide it at the Right Quality, Right Price, Right Now?’?
• How will the newly established Integrated Care Systems (ICS) transform health and care services to deliver better Quality of Care with better use of money, or Financial Improvement? How long will it take??
• How do we make the ICS model work? What can we learn from other systems?
• How do health and care inequalities impact ‘Right Care’? Is Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) the panacea?
• ‘Transforming Leadership’ - Can we make ICSs work to Transform Healthcare in the wake of the Messenger Review? Is the NHSE ‘Single Aligned Leadership’ Model the answer?
• Digital Health Transformation - Is Digital Health a game-changer??
• Should the priority for digital development be to ‘release time to care’ for clinicians and healthcare staff who are under enormous pressure??
• How does digital health impact health and care inequalities and ‘Right Care’?
• What is the link between Digital Transformation of services and delivering better Quality of care with better use of money or Financial Improvement?

A taster of what’s to come

One of my first conversations was with Chris Bown and one of many topics we discussed was what qualitative and financial issues are you seeing within the healthcare system today. You can listen to Chris’ thoughts on this here:

Another early conversation was with Jason Dorsett - and here are his thoughts on addressing leadership issues within the healthcare system:

Hopefully you can see the huge value in these conversations and I look forward to sharing healthcare insights and debating the big issues with many of you over the coming months.

About the author

Obi Hasan is the Founder and Director of Clarity Transformation, and The Big Healthcare Issue. He is a Transformation Director and Financial Improvement Programme Director with over 20 years’ experience delivering complex transformation programmes involving quality, efficiency and financial improvement and engaging stakeholders across healthcare systems to collaborate in delivering transformation change.