NHS South Yorkshire Five Year Plan

The ‘NHS Five Year Joint Forward Plan’ has been developed by NHS South Yorkshire, working with the region’s hospitals, Local Councils and voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations.  

NHS South Yorkshire have also engaged with local people to create the plan. Last year they asked people, ‘What Matters to You about your Health and Wellbeing’ and used the findings for the content of the plan. Over 2,500 responded and said they wanted: 

• Accessibility - Being able to access care services in a timely and convenient way, particularly for GP services. Removing the barriers to accessing services including knowing where to access information and support. Vulnerable and harder to reach groups also felt their access was limited by their circumstances, condition or background. 
• Affordability: The costs of transport, parking, medication, treatments as well as being able to live more healthily particularly because of cost of living challenges. 
• Agency: People want to be in control of their own care and want better access to the information, tools and capacity to manage this. 

 The NHS Five Year Joint Forward Plan has been developed at a challenging time for the NHS and wider public services, who are still managing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, whilst also dealing with operational and workforce pressures, periods of industrial action and more recently the impact of the cost of living crisis on our communities. 

Gavin Boyle, Chief Executive at NHS South Yorkshire said: “On average people in South Yorkshire live shorter lives and spend more years in poor health than other parts of the country. There are differences in the experience of health and care services and health outcomes for some of our communities which are unfair and must be tackled. This plan seeks to do this. 

“The recovery of health services following the pandemic will continue to be a priority, so that local people can access the care and support they need in a timely way. However, we will put greater emphasis on working alongside our neighbourhoods to promote good health and prevent illness. We will also further develop services in our communities adopting innovative ways to provide care closer to home and reduce avoidable admissions to hospital care for both physical and mental illness. We are listening to our partners and our communities and we will continue to develop our plan in response.” 

There are seven areas of focus in the plan: 

• Improving maternity services and services for children and young people. 
• Improving access to primary care (GPs, pharmacists, optometrists and dentists) 
• Improving access and transforming mental health services 
• Transforming community services 
• Recovering urgent and emergency care including developing alternatives to A&E 
• Recovering and optimising cancer, elective and diagnostic pathways 
• Improving access and redesigning specialist services for those with learning disabilities and autism. 

You can read more about the priorities in the full report and summary version on the NHS South Yorkshire website here: https://southyorkshire.icb.nhs.uk/about-us/our-structure/five-year-joint-forward-plan  

NHS South Yorkshire are inviting people to comment on the plans, you can do so by emailing [email protected] by the end of July.