Scale up the best to achieve Long Term plan goals

Featured article - 27 February 2019
By SCIE Chair Paul Burstow

So, we have a long-term plan for the NHS. There’s a lot to welcome, especially in mental health. Yet to succeed in its ambition for a shift towards population health and integrated care, the plan requires new ways of working to be adopted and scaled quickly. And it requires a sustained commitment and shared purpose within the NHS and between the NHS, local government, community and voluntary sectors, housing; and many others. You could say that all of this has been discussed many times before. The prize is the smoother integration between all the institutions named above. But that’s been knocked about for years. Critics might suggest we’re stuck in a “reform cycle”. So how can it be different this time? Well, by looking at the best innovations and scaling them up, within local systems that embrace and encourage integrated leadership and multidisciplinary teams, very real change could be in the air.

• Read the rest of Paul's article in the HSJ