UK healthcare providers must take note of government’s 10 year health plan

Joanne Ellis and Rachel Soundy, healthcare experts at Pinsent Masons, were commenting following the government strategy, “Fit for the Future: 10 year health plan for England”, which outlines plans to address long standing challenges facing the NHS.

The plan, published by the Department of Health and Social Care on 3 July, comes in response to what has been described as the “critical condition” of the NHS due to long waiting lists, difficulty accessing GPs and dentists, and poor outcomes in areas such as cancer care.

The plan proposes three shifts “from hospital to community”, “analogue to digital”, and “from sickness to prevention”. To deliver the changes, the government proposes a new operating model for the NHS involving greater transparency and accountability, workforce reform and financial overhaul. A more open approach is proposed, with performance data made more accessible to the public as well as a redesign of the NHS workforce in a bid to align staff roles with the future direction of care. Additionally, NHS finances will be restructured to support long-term investment in prevention, technology, and community services.

Digital transformation forms the cornerstone of the strategy, including plans to create the most digitally accessible health system in the world. The plan also sets out to create the “HealthStore” to enable patients to access approved digital tools to manage or treat their conditions as well as work to simplify the process of getting approval for healthtech innovations use in the NHS.

Soundy said: “Ambitions to create the ‘most digitally accessible health system’ are admirable, but the issues around accessibility and the digitally disadvantaged remain. It will be interesting to see whether the government proposes to build digital tools from scratch or whether they will buy or licence some of the many existing products available in the healthcare sector.”

The plan also echoes the need for more GPs and community based care, flagged in the UK spending review last month. The rollout of neighbourhood health centres has again been noted, with aims to bring healthcare out of hospitals and clinics and make it more community based. This builds on the success of the NHS community diagnostic centres.

The government will redesign the NHS workforce model as a whole, not just in terms of increasing GP numbers, aligning staff roles with the future direction of care. This aim is to empower frontline workers to lead innovation. The strategy says its ambition is to reduce international recruitment to less than 10% by 2035. This comes amid a tightening of UK immigration rules and workers. 

Soundy said: “With an ongoing skills crisis, this will need to be balanced with investment in local workforce, which the 10 year plan partially picks up via the expansion of medical school places and 2,000 more nursing apprenticeships over the next three years.”

It is proposed that the Care Quality Commission (CQC) is reformed towards a more data-led regulatory model. Soundy said: “We have seen this model emerge in other government departments over the last few years and whilst likely a positive development for users, I suspect that it will place a greater data reporting burden, alongside the financial burden of supporting this, on those regulated by the CQC.”

The plan also pledged to narrow health inequalities by working in partnership with local governments, the third sector, and wider society. It recognises that health outcomes are deeply influenced by social and economic factors, and aims to address these through coordinated, cross-sector action.

The new strategy is a result of “Change NHS”, the largest public consultation in NHS history with over 250,000 contributions from patients, staff, and stakeholders.