This is the ‘re-set’ year. The year the NHS must get to grips with the financial hand it’s been dealt.
This was the message from the NHS’s big chiefs to delegates at the NHS Confederation’s annual conference this week. In short, there will be no more money, so the sector must get on with the job of re-shaping services and local structures to deliver the best possible care for citizens.
Throughout the week, the buzzword on everyone’s lips has been STPs. Otherwise known as sustainability and transformation plans, these are being seen as the latest route to improving services, and getting there quickly.
The chief executive of NHS England has been clear. STPs matter. In Simon Stevens’ own words, STPs are a “problem-solving process for the elephants in the room” in a local health economy.
Yet on the exhibition floor of Manchester Central, as the rain drummed loudly on the roof above, there was dissent amongst senior NHS delegates with some viewing STPs as the latest structural ‘fad’ to force faster integration between organisations.
Compared to 2015’s conference, the mood at this week’s gathering was less sombre and gloomy. This is not to say that NHS leaders were dancing on the tables (or at least WA didn’t observe this in the hotel bar after the networking dinner!).
Rather, the atmosphere in 2016 was one of resignation. There was an acceptance that the financial envelope isn’t going to improve anytime soon, and that change is just around the corner …if only people figure out how to solve issues that have been put in the ‘too difficult’ box for years.
Many of the keynote speeches were necessarily (and frustratingly so for some) light on detail due to the EU referendum purdah period. Jeremy Hunt said he wants this decade to be the ‘quality decade’. But be under no illusions. This decade is going to be remembered as the ‘money decade’ by the sector, despite Jeremy’s best political rhetoric.
In fact, the most notable moment of Jeremy Hunt’s keynote on Thursday was when he assured delegates “I want to do this job for a very, very long time”. He went on to say in the Q&A session that, “I’m not a man who just manages things …I actually want to make things better.” A dig at his potential rivals in the impending reshuffle perhaps?
On a final note, despite good representation from independent health and social care providers in particular, the independent sector wasn’t mentioned once in any of the breakout or main stage sessions WA attended. In fact, social care was only mentioned when speakers were pressed for comment by conference host Anita Anand.
This lack of recognition of the role of independent providers is not surprising at a conference that is often used to galvanise the senior NHS troops for the rocky road ahead. Yet it was disappointing the NHS’s capacity and capability challenge, which Jim Mackey rightly referenced in his speech, was not picked up in the wider conference narrative as an area where independent providers can help.
And finally. In his introduction to conference, NHS Confederation chair and former Tory health secretary Stephen Dorrell ominously quoted Charles Dickens’ ‘winter of despair’. We’re not there yet, but the NHS knows the winter of 2016 may well become that if STPs and the Carter efficiency agenda turn out not to be a winning hand.