Improving digital access to services, providing more care closer to where you live and improving the way health and care organisations work together, are at the heart of a 5 year strategy for north Cumbria.

The ambitions outlined in the ‘Building Integrated Care – happier healthier communities’ document are a five year road map to meeting the increasing demands on health and care services and supporting people to be in more control of their own health.

The priorities were identified and developed by listening to our community, staff and partners and reflect the areas we must focus on to meet the challenges of the future.

Director of strategy for North Cumbria Health and Care, Ramona Duguid, said:

“We know that the NHS and our partners face increasing demand and we must work together to respond to this increase. Now, more than ever before, we are collaborating across organisations and developing our future plans together to better respond to the needs of our community.

“When we started talking about how we would improve services for our community and our staff over the next five years, we started by listening to people on the ground about what was important to them and how we could make things work better.

“We’ve changed some of our thinking because of what we have heard, and have described a future where we work together towards a shared vision for our area.”

The 5 year plan outlines 3 key aims:

• We will improve the health and care outcomes of our local communities and support people of all ages to be in control of their own health
• We will build health and care services around our local communities
• We will provide safe and sustainable high quality services.

To do this we have to improve areas that will enable us to make the changes and improvements needed.

We identified these key areas which the community agreed were important:

• We will be a great place to work and develop
• We will integrate how health and care and other organisations work together
• We will live within our means and spend resources wisely

We listened to what our staff and patients said, and added another based on feedback, about embracing digital technologies:

• Deliver digitally enabled care

The plan aligns with Cumbria’s Wellbeing Strategy and Public Health Strategy and includes ambition physical and mental health services from primary care through to specialist referrals.

Notes

You can read more about the strategy here and download a long, a short and an easy read version – www.northcumbriahealthandcare.nhs.uk/our-vision/our-strategy

What is North Cumbria Health and Care Integrated Care Partnership?

It brings together the following system partners:

• NHS North Cumbria Clinical Commissioning Group plans and buys most of our clinical services and reviews performance and quality. It also supports our GP services.
• North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust runs our two main hospitals the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle and the West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven and community services, including district nursing.
• Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust provides mental health services.
• It also involves GPs, Cumbria Health on Call (CHoC), North West Ambulance Service, NHS England, NHS Improvement, and our many independent providers of home care, care homes and nursing homes.
• Our health and care partnership values our vibrant third sector organisations – many of them are providers as well as advocates for key groups in our community including carers, those with disabilities and older people. We work closely with Cumbria CVS and Healthwatch Cumbria.