“Now is quite obviously the time to confront – not duck – the big local choices needed to improve health and care across England over the next five years, and STPs [Sustainability and Transformation Plans] are a way of doing this. Their success will largely depend on the extent to which local leaders and communities now come together to tackle deep-seated and long-standing challenges that require shared cross-organisational action”
Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of NHS England
How are councils preparing scrutiny for Sustainability and Transformation Plans?
Local Government is fundamental to developing and implementing Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs), which are at the heart of the drive to greater efficiency and improvements in quality across health and care systems. High quality STPs will qualify for access to the Sustainability and Transformation Fund to help them to deliver their ambitions towards closing the three ‘gaps’ identified in the Five Year Forward View:
- health and wellbeing gap: prevention, patient activation, choice and control and community engagement and reducing inequalities
- care and quality gap: new models of care and digital technology to improve outcomes and efficiency
- finance and efficiency gap: restore financial balance
With STPs currently being assessed by NHS England, CfGS is hosting a one-day event: Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) – Championing the role of scrutiny – looking at how scrutiny can help ensure that STPs are robust, effective and inclusive. This timely event will help answer the following questions:
- What are STPs and what will they achieve?
- Do STPs reflect the public voice?
- How will system leaders implement STPs and how will they be held to account?
- How can health scrutiny support the implementation of STPs?
This could be an important event for any authority looking at preparing scrutiny for Sustainability and Transformation Plans.