NHS North East London And Integrated Care Board Looking To Cut Its Costs By 50% Over The Next Year.

The NHS will make three major shifts in how it handles healthcare over the next decade following a decline in public support, writes Sebastian Mann, local democracy reporter.

According to a recently published report, the service wants to move away from hospitals administering care to new neighbourhood services, to prioritise prevention over treatment in the long-term, and replace analogue systems with digital.

A larger focus will be placed on new artificial intelligence technologies in a bid to free up staff’s time.

NHS North East London (NEL), the integrated care board (ICB) overseeing care in the region, is also looking to cut its costs by 50% over the next year.

Over the next ten, NHS NEL will look to remap how health practices cover the neighbourhoods in Havering.

The new ‘neighbourhood’ zones would serve 100,000 patients, as part of a scheme that has already been rolled out in the borough of Hackney as well as Manchester and Peterborough.

National guidance on neighbourhoods is that it is “essential that care is planned to meet all health and social care needs” and neighbourhood boundaries “do not prevent seamless, joined-up care”.

Neighbourhood health services will be open twelve hours a day, six days a week, Havering Council says.

Additionally, two-thirds of outpatient appointments – currently costing £14billion – will shift to digital alternatives, while 95% of complex patients will have universal care plans by 2027.

Under the ‘prevention to treatment’ scheme, the NHS aims to create a “smoke-free generation,” tackle obesity, reduce alcohol harm, and “eliminate” cervical cancer by 2040. The NHS hopes to achieve this by increasing screenings at neighbourhood health services.

Havering Council has said it will “restructure” its departments to “ensure that the commissioning team structure is not destabilised by the reductions within the NHS”.

The NHS is looking to change course after reporting in early July that public satisfaction with the service has dropped to 21% from 70% in 2010.

Officials say it is “not delivering value for taxpayers” by consuming 38% of government spending while productivity has fallen 25% below pre-pandemic levels.

Centralisation has also “inhibited” evolution, the report added, and patients wait to receive care from an “antiquated service reliant on posted letters, telephone queueing systems and convoluted access routes”.

The report projects a population boom in Romford by 30,000, in line with the council’s targets of 12,000 new homes in the area.

North East London Foundation Trust (NELFT), which oversees the day-to-day delivery of healthcare services in the area, is currently in the process of setting up new mental health teams, talking therapy groups and a community nursing scheme.

The report comes as the NHS faces increasing pressure from an “ageing population with long term conditions and widening levels of inequality,” the report says.

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