NHS 2023/24 priorities: what you need to know

On the 23rd of December 2022, NHS England released its new 2023/24 priorities and operational planning guidance which sets out objectives and priorities for the upcoming year.  

It should come as no surprise that the three top priorities for the service are to:  

• Recover core productivity 
• Progress the aspirations in the Long-Term Plan (LTP)
• Continue transforming the NHS for the future.  

The full guidance 2023/24 priorities and operational planning guidance can be found here. 

If you work for the NHS and your role is clinical, or you make up 9.5% of the NHS’s senior workforce, these changes are likely to have an impact on your day-to-day role. Let’s have a look in more detail. 

Helping the NHS get back on track 

One thing is certain: the NHS must prioritise the here and now.  

In order to improve patient safety, outcomes, and experience, the NHS has stated that they must: 

• Improve ambulance response and A&E waiting times 
• Reduce elective long waits and cancer backlogs, and improve performance against the core diagnostic standard 
• Make it easier for people to access primary care services, particularly general practice 

If any of these apply to your Trust or organisation, you may be wondering how you can gain momentum and improve the current situation for your teams and the patients you provide care for. If you are responsible for ensuring efficiency you may not have a current picture of where these bottlenecks are occurring. 

It is critical to have a clear picture of where to prioritise in order to make improvements. For example, if reducing ambulance handovers is critical in your organisation, do you know how and where your staff is being held up? Can you or your staff access the necessary information to make a real difference in improving this? 

For years, bed occupancy has been a key area for improvement, but the NHS recently announced that it will purchase thousands of extra beds in care homes and other settings to help discharge more patients and free up hospital space, you can read the full article on this here. This is a huge step forward and demonstrates that steps are being taken to improve. But what else can be done to make further positive change? 

How you can promote a positive workplace culture 

We find that NHS Trusts struggle to gain proper insight into driving the necessary improvement in their organisations due to multiple and siloed systems. Radar Healthcare integrates with other systems, ensuring everything is streamlined and in one place. This then gives you overview and quick access to everything that is happening in your organisation, so you are then easily able to use this data for further improvement.  

Using specialised workflows allows processes and standard operating procedures to be followed up so that nothing gets missed; resulting in standardised behaviours and allowing you to create action plans to mitigate those incidents and drive further improvements. 

With the new Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) set to be implemented by Autumn 2023, mindset and culture are seen as key to success. In our most recent podcast episode, ‘Prioritising patient safety,’ we speak with Helen Hughes, Chief Executive of the charity Patient Safety Learning, about the work they do with organisations to help them transition to a more patient safety-focused culture. 

Creating a just culture in your organisation is important to allowing staff to come forward when something is wrong without fear of being blamed. Radar Healthcare helps you in developing an open culture where your teams are willing to learn and work collaboratively, thereby improving safety, outcomes and experience.   

“Working with Radar Healthcare is proving to be invaluable by bringing together all our incidents and events, audits, and continual improvements actions into one place. Empowering our workforce to be part of a proactive, caring, supportive environment, in which they can be proud to work.”

– Julie Spencer, Care, and Quality Director, Avery Healthcare  

Radar Healthcare makes it simple to drill down into your data by location (unit, ward or department) or specialist wards to see where different types of incidents are occurring across your entire Trust, allowing you to prioritise patient safety. 

Helping you in meeting the NHS Long-Term Plan   

The NHS has stated that they need to create stronger foundations for the future, with the goals of the NHS Long Term Plan. These include their core commitments to improve mental health services and services for people with a learning disability and autistic people. They will work with integrated care systems (ICSs) to support the delivery of the primary and secondary prevention priorities set out in the NHS Long-Term Plan. 

They will continue to work with systems to level up digital infrastructure and drive greater connectivity- this includes the development of a ‘digital-first’ option for the public and further development of and integration with the NHS App to help patients identify their needs, manage their health and get the right care in the right setting. Is your organisation using technology effectively to help improve patient safety? It is more important than ever to look into digital solutions, and how these can push for continuous improvement. So if you are already using technology, is it giving you the information you need to do this? If not, you might need to look at a more long-term solution.  

 How to become a ‘digital-first trust’ with Radar Healthcare 

Partnering with an integrated risk management system such as Radar Healthcare, allows you to level up your digital infrastructure.  

Our analytics module allows users to gain new insights from previously unknown, hidden, or unreachable data – all with a single click. Data analytics automatically triggers actions to ensure your performance is always monitored across various locations, giving you complete oversight. Natural language processing will start to spot common trends and words so you can understand where your risks are and mitigate them before they become a future incident, and pulse notifications will notify you immediately when thresholds you set are exceeded.  

Working alongside other modules, our analytics ensures compliance risks are mitigated, and improvements can be made from incidents, events, and audits. You can read more about our analytics module here.  

Bringing Radar Healthcare into your organisation allows you to leave paper behind, putting digital first and pushing continuous improvement without spending hours of your valuable time bringing together siloed data. We’re here to help you to make a difference.   

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