A letter sent from NHS England to accountable emergency officers for trusts and integrated care boards outlines the emergency preparedness, resilience and response (EPRR) exercise programme for 2024 to 2030.
Seven themes are set out for NHS organisations to exercise in turn on a yearly basis from October 2024, including cyber and digital and business continuity along with other areas such as infectious disease and pandemics, adverse weather, and casualty/mass casualty. NHSE will highlight particular capabilities around each theme along with “cross-cutting capabilities” such as incident management.
Organisations are expected to work together to plan, exercise and report on their capabilities for each theme, with NHSE encouraging consideration for “interdependencies across the sector” and the benefits of collaboration for a system-wide approach.
More details are to be provided in coming weeks, including details of a space on FutureNHS enabling organisations to access resources to support exercise planning and post-exercise reports, intended to help “embed a system of continuous learning and improvement” by enabling NHS organisations to share their learnings with each other.
Also from NHS England
In other news from NHSE, HTN highlighted a prior information notice worth £18 million, signalling the beginning of market engagement on an EPR system to capture health data and records across the health and justice area. Another pre-procurement notice shared plans for a digital weight management programme worth an estimated £23 million, aiming to help deliver behavioural lifestyle interventions, and June saw NHSE publish an opportunity for services to support a cyber security focused programme and assurance model, worth an estimated £4,290,000.
In July, NHSE shared clinical guidance around the automation and functionality of patient portals, as well as insight into the impact on appointments and procedures for the recent cyber attacks targeting organisations in South East London.
Also in July, HTN took a look at NHSE’s most recent board meeting and highlighted discussion around data, waiting list, cancer care, mental health and more.
And with regards to news from NHSE around emergency care and services; earlier in the year we shared an update on the metrics for an urgent and emergency care capital incentive scheme, along with plans to incentivise and increase virtual ward use to support flow through emergency departments.
