Sustainability

Sustainability
I am taking a bit of risk in writing this message. The year-end returns have yet to be processed and agreed but, possibly against the odds, NHS Halton CCG seems to be in a good place in terms of meeting our statutory financial duties for 2015/16. However, there is no doubt that next year, 2016/17, will be even more of a challenge and it is likely that we will be setting out a significant cost improvement programme for the coming year.

We will be using our Governing Body meeting on  7^th April 2016 to set out the nature and scale of the challenge we face. Our Governing Body is a meeting that is held in public and starts in the Civic Suite, Runcorn Town Hall at 10am. We will also be using every opportunity, every contact with the people we meet and work with to set why it is imperative to act now to return the system to financial balance and why, if we don’t, the sustainability of the health and care system is under threat.

This is not entirely about a burning platform, it is about intervening and acting to restore financial balance before it is too late to do so. It is about having a burning ambition to deliver redesign and transformation programmes that will close the health and wellbeing gap and the care and quality gap, which cannot be done without also addressing the finance and efficiency gap. Transformation needs sustainability, sustainability creates transformation opportunities. We can all play a part in delivering both.

Simon Banks

Healthy New Towns

This week it was announced that Halton had been chosen as one of ten national “healthy new town” sites. The area around Halton Lea, some 800 residential units, will be used to develop and test creative solutions for the health and care challenges of the 21^st century – obesity, dementia and community cohesion. The Healthy New Towns work is about reimagining how healthcare can be delivered by joining up the design of the built environment with modern health care services, and harnessing new models of technology-enabled primary care. The Healthy New Towns work fits like a glove on to our Well North initiative and our other actions with partners in the borough under the One Halton banner to promote health and wellbeing, social cohesion and community resilience. The expression of interest that we summited as a collective last summer was one of 114 applications from local authorities, NHS organisations and housing developers – so the competition was fierce.  So, well done to all involved in this application, together we will make this a success and the start of a wider movement for renewal and improved care.

Simon Banks