In an announcement today, Simon Stevens, the Chief Executive of the NHS in England provided an update on the progress of the NHS Five Year Forward View, the national plan to transform the healthcare system.

For Lancashire and South Cumbria residents this means greater partnership working between NHS, local government, patient groups and community, voluntary and faith organisations through the Healthier Lancashire and South Cumbria programme. The partnership is working to help people stay more healthy so they can avoid time in hospital, make it easier for people to see a GP and get help faster for people with mental ill health.

An easy to understand guide has been published to explain how this sees organisations coming together to improve outcomes and care for local people, reduce pressures on services and make best use of our financial resources.

Organisations in Lancashire and South Cumbria are involved in improvements that need to happen across the whole region and are working to develop local plans by working together in five areas. These are the Fylde coast, Pennine Lancashire, Central Lancashire, West Lancashire and Morecambe Bay.

New ways of working on the Fylde coast have been highlighted by NHS England as an exemplar of good practice and those, or similar developments, could be replicated across the whole of Lancashire and South Cumbria to the benefit of the population of the whole region. The Healthier Lancashire and South Cumbria programme will enable innovations on the Fylde Coast and best practice from the other localities to be spread more widely and quickly as and when lessons are learned from the implementation process.

Healthier Lancashire and South Cumbria has published an easy to understand guide to the challenges in health and care for the region and how organisations are working together to create solutions to tackle them.

Dr Amanda Doyle, a Blackpool GP and Chief Officer for Healthier Lancashire and South Cumbria said:

“This means organisations across Lancashire and South Cumbria working in a collaborative way as a Sustainability and Transformation Partnership. This will allow us to develop solutions and make decisions together in the interest of our local communities.

The pressures the NHS is under are well-known and so making best use of the money, staff and services we have is crucial.

The document which we have published aims to help local people and health and care staff to understand the shared challenges we face in our area, how we need to work together to tackle these and how local people need to be involved.”