Delivering better care in North East Essex
by Josh Gaw

Of all the challenges the NHS faces, this is the one it literally cannot afford to get wrong – and we are proud of the work we’re doing to help providers get it right. The only way to make the whole hospital sector financially viable is to reduce – and speed up – the flow of people through its wards and waiting rooms.

To make that happen, absolutely everyone involved needs to start behaving differently:

• Hospitals need to get better at triaging patients in and out.
• Partners in primary care, mental health, community services, social care and social housing need to join up better so less people head into hospital, and those that do get home quicker.
• Leaders must prioritise the needs of the system over their own organisation.
• Clinicians must work in different ways, often with colleagues from other specialisms and even sectors.
• Patients need to take greater control of managing their own conditions.
• And the public at large need to get better at making healthier choices.

The end result of all this change will be (the system believes) that demand overall becomes manageable, and more care is delivered closer to home in community settings – thereby reducing demand on hospitals and financially righting the boat.
As Out of Hospital experts, we have extensive experience supporting community and primary care providers – often working with acute and social care partners – to tackle complex change programmes. We are already starting to see the powerful impact getting it right can have on local health systems.
This is excellently highlighted by our recent work in North-East Essex (NEE), helping support the recently established NEE Out of Hospital Programme Board (OoHPB).

What is the OoHPB?
The NEE Out of Hospital Programme Board (OoHPB) was set-up in April 2017 to bring together organisations and practitioners (including GPs, social care and mental health providers) that provide health, wellbeing, and social care services in community and domestic settings across North-East Essex. The Board is part of the NE Essex and Suffolk STP apparatus.

What are the Board’s priorities?
The initial priority for the Board was to bring together Out of Hospital providers across NE Essex to help raise capabilities, improve integration and coherency across the system, and encourage greater collaboration. It is envisaged that by achieving this, the wider challenges on the health system will be significantly reduced. The key aims of the OoHPB currently include:

• Designing and implementing new models of care that ensure patients are treated in the right place in a timely manner.
• Developing effective supply-chain relationships amongst providers
• Encouraging self-managed care across the system

What role has Baxendale played?
Given our long-standing presence in NEE working with Anglian Community Enterprise (ACE) – a community provider in NE Essex – we were asked to support the creation of the OoHPB Project Management Office (PMO). This included linking together existing projects across the wider health system, developing key workstreams and working groups around these, and helping kick-off pilots and projects that integrate working between services.

What progress has the Board made?
The NEE OoHPB has successfully established a transformation function, resulting in greater collaboration between partners including regular meetings, increased openness and dialogue, and a more integrated strategic approach. They have created working groups that are now in the process of supporting the project management of initial projects and pilots, which include self-management, integration and End of Life care.

Coming together under the OoHPB has had a profound impact on the way Out of Hospital services work in North East Essex. We think that the wider UK can learn from this model to deliver more effective services in the community at lower costs to the NHS, and closer to home for the people that need them.

Want to talk to us about our Out of Hospital solutions? Get in touch with our Health & Social Care expert: ceri.jones@baxendale.co.uk.