Inconsistent and Incongruent Messages

The King’s Fund have just released an excellent video to help explain how the NHS works and some of the complex things going on in it at the moment. It doesn’t shy away from making it crystal clear who is in charge of the money, nor the difficulties we’re facing in staffing and resource allocation. Have a watch of it and then keep reading!

 

 

What is particularly important to understand, especially where we are learning to work in new ways together, like here in Morecambe Bay, is just how inconsistent and incongruent the messages are that we receive from the leadership structures of the NHS.

 

So, here in the Bay, we are forming an Accountable Care System, which brings together different health & social care commissioners and providers to work more effectively together. We are forming great relationships, breaking down walls and barriers to work together, whilst tackling significant budget issues as we try and ensure that we deliver care in the most excellent, safe and sustainable way for our population (whom we are trying to include fully in the co-design of the services we provide).

 

One might think, as we are being actively encouraged to reorganise ourselves in this way, that the Department of Health, NHS England, NHS Improvement and the CQC would all be pulling together to support these changes. One might presume that they would ensure the various contracts and ways of paying and assessing us would enable us to do this important work – the opposite is in fact the case!

 

On the one hand we are encouraged to ensure we work more efficiently and “cut the waste” out of our system, but when we do so, the contracts in place are working against us!! we literally being told to work one way and then penalised if we do! It is an entirely schizophrenic existence and creates an extraordinary amount of wasted time and energy.

 

I’m not exactly sure what it is that is causing the disconnect between the different regulatory bodies. However, as they require of us a new collaborative way of working that ensures greater efficiency and improved models of care…..perhaps it could be better modelled and enabled by those in the “centre”. This would give the entire reorganization a great deal more integrity. Cultural and behavioural change is talked about a great deal and we are enacting it despite the perverse drivers working against us. I wonder if the same is true at HQ, Elephant and Castle. This mixed messaging needs to stop and those of us leading systems, working with great complexity, need to be given the permission, support, and enablers to really flourish.

 

 

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Don’t Mind The Gap – Address It!

So, here it is in black and white: the health gap between the north and south is getting wider, and in fact it is now the worst it has been in over 50 years!

 

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/08/alarming-rise-in-early-deaths-of-young-adults-in-the-north-of-england-study?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-4770286/Death-records-growing-north-south-divide-study-finds.html?ito=email_share_article-top

 

I’ve blogged about this on here before, but the figures from this latest study are utterly stark:

 

In 2015, 29.3% more 25-34-year-olds died in the north than the south.

For those aged 35-44 it was almost 50% higher than the south in 2015!

 

Overall, there were 1.2MILLION more early deaths for those under 75 in the North compared to the South over the last 50 years. That is 24000 people dying younger than needed every single year extra in the North.

 

Leading complex change in the NHS and social care system involves systems thinking and economic modelling, which is more like gardening than a traditional mechanistic approach. However, you can prune all you like and plant all kinds of new seeds, but if your soil is depleted of the resources that plants need to grow and flourish and if you’re living in an area of drought, then no matter how hard you try, your garden remains barren. This is our experience in the North and it has to change now! We can’t simply take the same approach as the south. The soil is different here, the land is barren and the environment is harsher.

 

What the North needs now is a clear admission, by central government, of the inequalities that exist and a fair redistribution of resources to tackle the health deficit we experience here. As gardeners, we are working our fingers to the bone. We are engaging in population health, redesigning our systems, ensuring that we are dealing with our waste appropriately and joining up our depleted partnerships to provide the best care we possibly can. But we need investment in our soil! We need water! We need to know that northern gardens matter as much as southern ones do. The wider determinants of health – poverty, housing, education, aspiration, adverse childhood experiences and isolation are themselves in need of investment. But we also need investment, not further austerity, in the health and social care systems that are trying to deal with the consequences of these issues. Yes, we need a people movement in the North (see previous blogs), but we need a fair allocation of resource also!

 

The evidence is clear. The challenge to the centre is this: what will be done differently to redress this imbalance? What will be done to allow the North to flourish in health and wellbeing?

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What Every Northerner Should Know About the North/South Health Gap

Tweet Everybody knows about the Gender Pay Gap – it’s well publicised and very much in the public domain for discussion – and too right! – How is this even still an issue? It it is quite simply wrong that women should earn less than men, any time, any place, end of discussion.   Well the [Continue Reading …]

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