A coalition of health and social care charities in England has published a five-year plan with the aim of ending unequal access, transferring power to communities and a greater focus on patient experience.
National Voices developed its strategy for 2024-2029 by working collaboratively with key stakeholders.
As a result, it identified three areas of focus: unequal access, patients’ voices in decision-making, and changing how the NHS measures success.
Jacob Lant, chief executive of National Voices, said the strategy set out a ‘trajectory of how we think our “broken NHS” can be repaired’.
He said: ‘The key is to refocus the system around patient needs and experiences, especially those facing the worst health inequalities.’
The coalition said that its 200-plus members had reported that the growing issue with access that NHS performance statistics had highlighted over the last decade was not felt equally.
National Voices wants to find solutions to this by addressing the barriers experienced by those facing the worst outcomes.
It also wants to see a transfer of power to people and communities. The coalition said that its approach of bringing together people with lived experience with policymakers and clinical leaders on a regular basis ensured policies reflected real-life needs.
Its strategy sets out how its approach can be used to democratise decision-making in health and care, ensuring both patients and the public have their say.
And the organisation said it aimed to demonstrate what this power-sharing model of care would look like if it were to be spread through every level of the NHS and social care.
The final area of focus for the coalition is to shift the measures of success.
The NHS is primarily judged on process measures and volumes of activity, such as the number of hip replacement surgeries, which National Voices said means that media and political narratives are almost entirely focused on key performance indicators (KPIs), such as the size of the elective backlog.
It said that KPIs reflect only a very narrow part of the care pathway and do not assess patient outcomes and experiences of care.
National Voices is keen to embed the patient experience into the way the NHS measures success. It will do this by growing the use of its I Statements as a basis for understanding what matters most to people.
