Norfolk and Suffolk ICB has addressed future plans for strategic commissioning and neighbourhood health, in a written response to NHS chief executive Jim Mackey’s questions to ICBs around planning and priorities for 2026/27.
The ICB recognises “many important local successes” over the last year, with plans to combine “the best of both legacy ICBs to create a healthcare system shaped by strategic commissioning”. The short-term focus is remaining on plan and achieving national standards for performance and quality of care, it states, whilst longer term ambitions revolve around supporting populations in living healthier and longer lives, supported by evidence-led digital transformation shifting focus to prevention and neighbourhood-based care.
On strategic commissioning, Norfolk and Suffolk plans to build on shared data infrastructure and integrated datasets to advance population health improvement, with the Norfolk and Suffolk Data Hub bringing together data from across primary, secondary, and social care into a single longitudinal patient record. The Norfolk and Suffolk Intelligence Function and Protect NoW team will be using population health intelligence and management approaches to target resources where they can deliver the biggest impact, it continues, and providers will be able to access linked data to support in the development of new models of care.
Two recurrent investment funds of £27 million in 2026/27 rising to £60 million in 2027/28 have been agreed for community-based preventative schemes, according to the ICB, with eight priorities set out as integrated urgent care, neighbourhood health, end of life care, cardiovascular disease, stroke, weight management and smoking cessation, elective care demand management, and mental health. It also outlines ambitions to “rebalance” investment across the system through outcomes-based community and primary care contracts prioritising prevention, self-management, and early diagnosis.
Norfolk and Suffolk highlights its development of an integrated prevention and optimisation pathway for cardiovascular disease to focus on identification and management of hypertension and lipids via means such as digital risk stratification and clinical decision support. A system integrator will be commissioned to convene industry and delivery partners, it states, avoiding duplication and unwarranted variation. As such, cardiovascular disease will serve as a test-bed for more integrated delivery models, with learnings to be applied to other priority pathways.
The vision for neighbourhood care is for primary care to be the foundation, the ICB shares. A Primary Care Action Plan is to support alignment of activity around shared priorities, and plans are in development to recommission community services in the region as “the principal mechanism for achieving ambitious change” in how services are delivered. Sharing information digitally will be a key part of this approach, the ICB states.
Transformation of the acute sector is pivotal to enabling neighbourhood delivery, Norfolk and Suffolk notes. “Through the Norfolk and Waveney University Hospitals Group’s ‘One Strategy’ programme, acute services, workforce, digital capability and estates are being redesigned to define a new role for acute providers within an integrated, neighbourhood-focused health system. This includes realising the opportunity presented by the near £3bn investment into Norfolk and Waveney through the New Hospital Programme to reshape the role of hospitals so that specialist, complex and infrastructure-dependent care remains concentrated within acute settings, while lower-acuity and routine care is increasingly delivered through neighbourhood models.”
Next steps cover investing in outcomes and population health data to evidence impact; implementing a single point of access for elective care; deploying shared digital architecture; developing digital initiatives to support 24-hour access to virtual care; and expanding remote monitoring and virtual connection to specialist clinical skills for diagnosis.
Wider trend: ICB strategic planning
The board of Cheshire and Merseyside ICB in a recent meeting focused on cyber security risk, assurance, and improvement activity across the region. While the ICB claims to have established a “strong foundation”, it proposes to refresh its cyber improvement programme to offer a clearer link between strategy, delivery, measurable outcomes, and board assurance, with the next phase to focus on governance and improve consistency in reporting across the system.
The newly-created Central East ICB, formed from Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICB, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB, and Hertfordshire, has revealed its five-year approach from strategy to delivery, highlighting the role of digital and data in achieving objectives and improving outcomes for the local population. Committing to adopting modern, digital mechanisms such as the NHS App by default, and to supporting its population in safely managing their own health with digital access and remote monitoring, the ICB sets out ‘five layers’: prevention and screening, supported self-care, proactive outreach and risk mitigation, care coordination for complex needs, and crisis response and recovery.
Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB’s Digital Inclusion Delivery Framework has outlined a “bold and unified vision” for tackling digital inclusion, based around five themes: connectivity and access to devices and data; digital accessibility and information literacy; workforce digital skills and confidence; partnerships; and digital inclusion knowledge and expertise. The ICB commits to using analytics to better understand digital inclusion barriers and gaps, both in the workforce and wider population. User-centred design and co-production will inform all digital projects to ensure accessibility and usability, and a focus will be placed on those experiencing the greatest health inequalities.
