Long Term Plan North West London Report
Download (PDF 759.39 KB)Summary of report content
The NHS has produced a ‘Long Term Plan’ setting out the things it wants health services to do better for people across the country. This includes making it easier to access support closer to home and via technology, doing more to help people stay well, and providing better support for people with long-term health conditions. Whilst the national plan has set some clear goals, it’s up to local areas to decide how they’re achieved – that means engaging with local people and listening to their experiences and expectations of current and future services.
Healthwatch organisations in Central and West London, alongside the national Healthwatch network has collected local views on the NHS Long Term Plan (LTP) through surveys, focus groups and events between April and June 2019, to give people the opportunity to help local hospitals, GP surgeries and community services hear about the changes people would like to see.
Hosting 18 events in April, May and June 2019, local Healthwatch organisations in Central and West London engaged with a total of 257 local people.
During the events, we asked people ‘what works, what doesn’t work, and what could easily be improved’?
We then asked what matters most to them and recorded experiences around prevention and early intervention, assessment, diagnosis and treatment, and ongoing care and support.
We also asked people how engaged they would like to be, and whether they would like to be involved in designing new services. As part of this, we asked them which aspects of communication and engagement could be improved.
When exploring basic service attributes, we find that local people consider communication, staffing, continuity of treatment and care, plus service access to be most important in current and future services.
We also focussed on specific services of Mental Health, Learning Disabilities, Children & Young People, and the supplementary topics of IT systems and digital communication, the voluntary and community sector, getting the ‘best start in life’ and helping people to ‘age well’.
In summary – Healthwatch says:
• If the plan is to work it needs to be co-produced with patients/service users.
• The users’ voice needs to be heard from the beginning and service users must be consulted in planning.
• Hold regular ‘big events’ to inform and engage, and give participants timely feedback.
• Engage with Healthwatch.