WIREDGOV

Katherine Murphy, Chief Executive of The Patients Association, said: “We welcome ‘Next Steps on the NHS Five Year Forward View’, and will work with NHS England to ensure it is delivered successfully and engages with patients nationally and locally.

“This is essential both to ensure that the importance of change is understood by everyone, and to get input from patients about how new and re-designed services can meet their needs.

“To that end, we support the creation of Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships and Accountable Care Systems, and the proposed use of Healthwatch’s five steps to ensure local people have their say. It is also clear that the new organisations will have new accountability structures, and that these will vary considerably – this is only right, so long as increased variety does not equate to increased opacity.

“We are also pleased to see a prominent goal to improve patient safety, and that preventing healthcare-acquired infections is the top priority within this. The new quarterly data publications about deaths likely to have been caused by problems in care should also be very helpful.

“Next Steps also rightly acknowledges that there remains considerable risk to the delivery of the Five Year Forward View, not least from the NHS’s strained financial position. The recent record is one of the NHS falling short of the financial improvements it has aimed for, so we hope this document’s optimism is borne out and that substantial improvements can indeed be made within the current funding envelope.

“We call on decision-makers nationally and locally to support this process, to ensure that NHS services work well for patients now and in the future.”

View report:  Five Year Forward View

Notes to editors

Healthwatch’s five steps to ensure local people have their say are reproduced on page 35 of Next Steps, and are:

1. Set out the case for change so people understand the current situation and why things may need to be done differently.
2. Involve people from the start in coming up with potential solutions.
3. Understand who in your community will be affected by your proposals and find out what they think.
4. Give people enough time to consider your plans and provide feedback.
5. Explain how you used people’s feedback, the difference it made to the plans and how the impact of the changes will be monitored.