Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust shared its organisational strategy for 2025 – 2030 last week, setting out its vision, objectives and measures, as well noting the opportunities to utilise data, innovation and a digital-first approach.
The trust opens with its vision to state “delivering the strategy will take time and will involve navigating problems along the way, adding that “it will mean learning how to fail, and trying something new, if our actions don’t deliver the desired outcomes”. The vision continues to note: “It will involve adapting to new national policy and opportunities. It will require us to be alert to different ways of doing things – learning from the experience of people who use our services, new research evidence, digital innovation and best practice from elsewhere.”
The trust also shares insights from “a thorough engagement process”, which identified needs for the organisation to “use technology to its full potential” to improve efficiency and decision-making, adding: “This includes prioritising digital transformation to improve service delivery and staff productivity, and utilising data for informed decision-making and performance tracking.”
Setting out its “case for change”, the strategy highlights “poor data recording and utilisation” limiting the trust’s ability to use data to inform decision-making, as well as the lack of “a consistent approach” to improvement and innovation, “inconsistent and ageing” infrastructure, and “significant variation” in activity, spend, and pathways.
Ensuring that data and digital technologies are “embedded and used routinely to support effective and productive care” forms one of five key parts of the trust’s five-year ambitions, which highlight the potential for digital tools to be used in supporting patient education, promoting self-management, and reducing administrative burdens. The strategy also shares plans to promote a digital-first approach, including with the adoption of AI and emerging technologies to help productivity.
The strategy also notes the importance of an “optimised” EPR for streamlining workflows and improving care coordination across the organisation, highlighting plans to roll out an EPR system “reflecting our care models and designed for a good clinical and operational user experience”. Work will also be done in collaboration with partners, it continues, around improving information access to ensure “seamless patient records”.
Digital also plays a role in supporting other areas of the trust’s future vision, including in its ambition to become an “employer of choice”, creating a digital learning platform to enable “on-demand access to training, certifications, and development opportunities aligned with care delivery models”, leveraging technology to “streamline recruitment, retention, and workforce management”, and using digital platforms to help promote transparency and communication between leadership and staff.
Turning its focus to the use of data, the trust commits to becoming a “data informed organisation”, where “joined up data generates insights and informs decision making in our every day”, with improvements to be made to the way data is captured, coded and shared, and in promoting staff’s understanding of that data and its value. Data architecture is also set to be developed, according to the strategy, allowing different information sources to be linked and triangulated, “including qualitative data such as feedback and complaints”. Additionally, the trust outlines how it will work with partners to “actively” share data and improve system-wide data insights to help inform strategic decision-making.
To read Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust’s organisational strategy for 2025 – 2030, please click here.
Tech to support health and care delivery from across the NHS
For a recent HTN Now webinar, we were joined by experts from across the primary care sector to debate how general practice, PCNs, and ICBs can utilise data and leverage technology to support operational efficiencies and improvements across primary care. Panellists included Kathryn Salt, assistant director of primary & community care, data and analytics for the Transformation Directorate, NHS England; Dr Shanker Vijayadeva, GP lead, digital transformation for the London region at NHS England; Dr Sheikh Mateen Ellahi, GP and practice partner at ELM Tree Surgery and South Stockton Primary Care Network; and Max Gattlin, digital consultant at X-on Health.
Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has become the latest healthcare organisation to implement the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record, as a way to help improve the accessibility of patient information across its services. The programme now involves 13 local NHS organisations and local authorities, providing a view of a patient’s history. Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS FT is now also adding “inpatient discharge summaries, outpatient clinic letters and emergency department discharge summaries” to the shared care record.
North Middlesex University Hospital has launched a virtual fracture clinic with the aim to “improve patient experience and boost efficiency”. The virtual clinic supports patients following a scan for a fracture or a minor injury, aiming to reduce physical follow-up appointments where possible. According to Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, this means that some patients “will no longer have to come back in for a consultation” as they will be able to review their scan and receive a treatment plan remotely instead.
An expert panel including Deborah El-Sayed, director of transformation and CDIO at Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire ICB; Dan Bunstone, clinical director at Warrington ICB; Stephen Bromhall, interim chief officer for digitaland data at South East Coast Ambulance Service; and Laura Thompson, director of marketing at The Access Group, joined us late last year to talk about approaches to tackling challenges from an ICS perspective; new models of care and pathway transformation; the role of technology in supporting the move from reactive to proactive care; and how a system approach can accelerate preventative care.
