Correspondence

Secretary of State Message to the NHS on the coronavirus response

Published 17 August 2020

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Dear colleagues,

Thank you for the dedication you have shown in our national effort against coronavirus.

During this difficult period for our country, we have seen the NHS doing what it does best, delivering incredible care with compassion, and I am so grateful to every single member of the team for the part you have played. Together we protected the NHS, and the nation has expressed how much it values you in so many ways.

This pandemic has taught us a great deal about our health and care system. We must keep learning throughout, about how we tackle COVID-19, and about how we protect the NHS over winter. At the same time, it is mission critical that we learn both from what we must change, and what went well that we must bottle and keep to improve the NHS for the future.

I want to make sure we have a conversation about this throughout the NHS. Last month I set out my thoughts in a speech at the Royal College of Physicians.

In the speech, which I hope you are able to take a few minutes to read, I set out 7 major, cultural lessons that I think we’ve all learnt over the past few months. These are:

  1. The importance of valuing our people, and how important it is to listen to staff at every level, and build a culture where we trust people to use their professional judgement to do the right thing.

  2. We must scythe away bureaucracy that is disempowering to the brilliant, highly motivated staff who want to get on with caring for patients.

  3. We have seen how patients and clinicians alike, not just young people, want to use technology, so we must double down on the huge advances we’ve made. Not only will it make life quicker and easier for patients, but it will free up clinicians to concentrate on what really matters.

  4. This crisis showed that we were at our best when we were looking outwards, drawing on ideas and expertise wherever they may be found. In the face of unprecedented challenges, this sense of enterprise and pragmatism is mission critical to the success of our health and care system.

  5. This system works best when it works as a system. This can only be done by the delivery of healthcare based on the needs of the population, not the design of the institution. We need to break down the silos that exist between providers and trusts of all kinds, and we need local authorities and the NHS to work together and be accountable together to local people.

  6. Just as we need more joined-up, collegiate working on the ground, we need the same at the centre. We’re making progress, but our national healthcare institutions are still too siloed, and we need to set clear ambitions about the future of social care in this country.

  7. Our NHS is a place where miracles are an everyday occurrence, but they must not shoulder the whole burden of keeping the nation well. One of my main priorities is making sure more people stay out of hospital, as well as providing the best possible care when they come in. To drive this prevention agenda, we must level up the nation’s health and care provision and tackle health inequalities.

But this is only the start of the conversation, and I want to hear what you think too; what works and what matters to you.

One way that you can get your voice heard is through taking part in our Bureaucracy Challenge.

This will look at every new proposed regulation or process and ask if it makes sense given the realities of modern, integrated healthcare.

We have launched an open call for evidence to invite views from health and social care colleagues, and I would be very grateful for your views to help us drive this important agenda.

We achieved things that people never thought possible, like building the Nightingale hospitals in 9 days, doubling ICU capacity to treat the most sick, and treating half of patients in outpatients and primary care online.

With your help, we can build on what went well, and what we’ve learnt, so we can forge a health and social care system of the future.

With thanks and best wishes,

Matt

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