NHS long term plan

As medicine advances, health needs change and society develops, the NHS has to continually move forward so that in 10 years time we have a service fit for the future.

The NHS Long Term Plan is drawn up by frontline staff, patients groups, and national experts to be ambitious but realistic.

How we will deliver the ambitions of the NHS Long Term Plan?

To ensure that the NHS can achieve the ambitious improvements we want to see for patients over the next 10 years, the NHS Long Term Plan also sets out how we think we can overcome the challenges that the NHS faces, such as staff shortages and growing demand for services, by:

• Doing things differently: we will give people more control over their own health and the care they receive, encourage more collaboration between GPs, their teams and community services, as ‘primary care networks’, to increase the services they can provide jointly, and increase the focus on NHS organisations working with their local partners, as ‘Integrated Care Systems’, to plan and deliver services which meet the needs of their communities.
• Preventing illness and tackling health inequalities: the NHS will increase its contribution to tackling some of the most significant causes of ill health, including new action to help people stop smoking, overcome drinking problems and avoid Type 2 diabetes, with a particular focus on the communities and groups of people most affected by these problems.
• Backing our workforce: we will continue to increase the NHS workforce, training and recruiting more professionals – including thousands more clinical placements for undergraduate nurses, hundreds more medical school places, and more routes into the NHS such as apprenticeships. We will also make the NHS a better place to work, so more staff stay in the NHS and feel able to make better use of their skills and experience for patients.
• Making better use of data and digital technology: we will provide more convenient access to services and health information for patients, with the new NHS App as a digital ‘front door’, better access to digital tools and patient records for staff, and improvements to the planning and delivery of services based on the analysis of patient and population data.
• Getting the most out of taxpayers’ investment in the NHS: we will continue working with doctors and other health professionals to identify ways to reduce duplication in how clinical services are delivered, make better use of the NHS’ combined buying power to get commonly used products for cheaper and reduce spend on administration.

Find out more

More information is available at www.longtermplan.nhs.uk, and we will continue to update our news section with the latest developments.