New health and care plan for NHS branded 'unambitious'

The Shared Delivery Plan details how the Sussex Health and Care Assembly’s Integrated Care Strategy – ‘Improving Lives Together’ – will be delivered.

It is due to go to the NHS Sussex Board for approval on July 5 but first passed across the desks of West Sussex County Council’s Health & Adult Social Care scrutiny committee (HASC) and Cabinet for discussion.

The HASC meeting prompted passionate words from Dr James Walsh (Lib Dem, Littlehampton East), who said he had seen ‘masses of such plans’ during his decades as a doctor, all of which contained ‘pages and pages of worthy ambition, aspirations, and virtually none of it has been delivered in that time’.

Describing this latest plan as ‘extraordinarily unambitious’, he highlighted some of the targets for the coming year.

One declared that the number of patients waiting in emergency departments for more than 12 hours would fall below 2%.

Another said that no patient would wait more than 65 weeks for their elective care treatment – planned, non-emergency treatment.

A third included the rather specific aim that, by March 2024, no more than 548 cancer patients would wait more than 62 days for treatment.

Tom Gurney, chief communications officer at NHS Sussex, said a lot of the points raised by Dr Walsh were ‘the very reason we need the plan in the first place’.

He said the major difference this time was that it was the first time all NHS organisations, local authorities and wider partners in Sussex had been involved in its delivery.

Mr Gurney added: “We’re keen to stress that we see this as a realistic ambition, particularly in the short-term.

“I think some of our long-term improvement priorities are ambitious but we felt that it needed to be because we all accept [that] the current status quo cannot continue.

“No-one accepts the current situation or thinks it’s acceptable in some areas, which is why we’re trying to do something about it.

“This needs short-term and long-term action which is why we’re trying to balance the two.”