Key takeaways
A decade-long vision for UK Healthcare
Plan focuses on prevention, innovation, and sustainable health services.
Digital transformation at the heart of reform
Investment in technology aims to improve access and patient outcomes.
Workforce and funding challenges remain critical
Success depends on addressing staffing gaps and long-term financial stability.
After a year in office, and months of teasers, anticipation and speculation, the government today unveiled its ambitious 10 Year Plan to transform – or some say save – the NHS.
Announcing the plan, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, said:
The principle is simple: Care should happen as locally as it can: digitally by default, in a patient’s home if possible, in a neighbourhood health centre when needed, in a hospital if necessary.”
There has been so much groundbreaking activity in recent months including government announcements to outline its ‘3 big shifts’, abolish NHS England, transform integrated care boards, and drastically cut non-clinical spending and workforce, all of which NHS organisations have been asked to get on with – that it has at times been easy to forget that the overall plan itself had not been released.
Now it has, while the finer details of implementation remain under development, we have more certainty of direction and the ability for system leaders to start to take steps to deliver the Plan.
Some key headlines
While we are continuing to digest the detail of the Plan, many of the expected elements have been confirmed, including:
Analogue to digital
The ambition is to create the most digitally accessible health system in the world and the most AI-enabled health system globally.
Key features of the Plan under this theme include:
The NHS App will enable every patient to have ‘a doctor in their pocket’ - a ‘full front door’ to the entire NHS by 2028.
Patients will be given control over a secure single record to provide more co-ordinated, personalised and predictive care.
Key features of the app will include: instant advice for non-urgent care, a patient choice platform, medicines and long term condition management, and providing feedback.
A new Health Data Research Service.
A longer-term plan to make genomic sequencing at birth universal.
Wearable devices to become a standard part of routine care.
Expansion of surgical robot use, starting next year.
The NHS working in partnership with those developing exciting new technologies to deliver the digital shift.
Moving care out of hospital into the community
The ambition is to shift to a model able to provide continuous, accessible and integrated care, outside of hospitals.
Neighbourhood Health Centres to be established in every community, eventually open 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, co-locating NHS, local authority and voluntary sector services.
An alternative to the GP partnership model, with GPs able to lead new Neighbourhood Health Providers.
Multi-Neighbourhood Providers – led by existing GP federations or other providers (including NHS Trusts), bringing together GP practices and smaller neighbourhood providers and providing shared back-office functions.
The establishment of Integrated Health Providers starting in 2026, with the best NHS foundation trusts able to hold whole population outcomes-based budgets.
Finance, estates, contracting
The focus on simply pumping more money into the NHS will be replaced by a value-based one.
Key elements which have been announced include:
Financial flows to incentivise innovation and support money moving out of hospitals and into the community, with funding targeted at economically/health challenged areas.
Multi-year budgets and plans with NHS organisations required to reserve at least 3% of annual spend for one-time investment in service transformation.
No more additional funding to cover deficits, with the majority of providers achieving annual surplus position by 2030.
Block contracts to be ‘deconstructed’ and payment withheld for poor quality care, with high quality care rewarded.
Development of ‘year of care’ payments to be tested from 2026.
Trusts to have authority to retain 100% of receipts from land asset disposal.
Potential for Public Private Partnerships to develop Neighbourhood Health Centres.
Trialling new ‘patient power payments’ – allowing patients to decide whether the provider should receive the full cost of their care.
In time, a new financial model where money will follow patients through their lifetimes, with providers rewarded based on how well they improve outcomes.
Structural and other legislative reform
A new NHS operating model and overall value-based approach will be established, with reforms to push power out more locally and to patients.
Elements of this include:
Combining the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England, reducing central headcount by 50%.
Building the strategic commissioning capabilities of integrated care boards.
A new Foundation Trust model by 2035 – ambition for every trust to be a Foundation Trust with freedoms around retaining surpluses for reinvestment and borrowing for capital investment.
More to digest…
Over the coming days and weeks, we will be working closely with our clients from all parts of the system to navigate the practical implications flowing from the Plan and support them in seizing the opportunities presented by it. Please keep an eye on our website and social media for more detailed analysis of the key elements.
In the meantime, do not hesitate to contact us to discuss what the Plan means for your organisation, and what you need to be doing and thinking about now.