Sussex Health And Care Plan "Unambitious" Says Councillor

A Sussex health and care plan which lays out milestones and objectives for the next five years has been branded ‘unambitious’ by one councillor but ‘realistic’ by its authors.

The Shared Delivery Plan details how the Sussex Health and Care Assembly’s Integrated Care Strategy – ‘Improving Lives Together’ – will be delivered.

It is due to go to the NHS Sussex Board for approval on July 5 but first passed across the desks of West Sussex County Council’s Health & Adult Social Care scrutiny committee (HASC) and Cabinet for discussion.

The HASC meeting prompted passionate words from Dr James Walsh (Lib Dem, Littlehampton East), who said he had seen ‘masses of such plans’ during his decades as a doctor, all of which contained ‘pages and pages of worthy ambition, aspirations, and virtually none of it has been delivered in that time’.

Describing this latest plan as ‘extraordinarily unambitious’, he highlighted some of the targets for the coming year.

One declared that the number of patients waiting in emergency departments for more than 12 hours would fall below 2%.

Dr Walsh said:

“So we’re content to have a large number of patients waiting up to 12 hours in an accident and emergency department. 

“That is unambitious and unacceptable in a modern health service.”

Another said that no patient would wait more than 65 weeks for their elective care treatment – planned, non-emergency treatment.

Dr Walsh said:

“That’s well over a year. That’s after waiting to see your GP, waiting to see a consultant, being investigated and diagnosed – say you need a hip replacement or a knee replacement – then another possible 65-week wait for that.”

A third included the rather specific aim that, by March 2024, no more than 548 cancer patients would wait more than 62 days for treatment.

Dr Walsh said that no patient should be waiting that long as time was of the essence when treating cancer.

He warned that delays would lead to ‘greater morbidity and mortality – the worsening of disease and death’.

Pointing to the national staffing and funding problems faced by the NHS, he added:

“That is the root of the problem and, until we grasp that nationally, none of these worthy words are going to happen and we’ll be sitting here in two years’ time, in five years’ time saying ‘why didn’t it happen?’

“And we’ll have a change of personnel who will produce a new plan with much the same words in it and nothing will have changed.”

Tom Gurney, chief communications officer at NHS Sussex, said a lot of the points raised by Dr Walsh were ‘the very reason we need the plan in the first place’.

He said the major difference this time was that it was the first time all NHS organisations, local authorities and wider partners in Sussex had been involved in its delivery.

Mr Gurney added:

“We’re keen to stress that we see this as a realistic ambition, particularly in the short-term.

“I think some of our long-term improvement priorities are ambitious but we felt that it needed to be because we all accept [that] the current status quo cannot continue.

“No-one accepts the current situation or thinks it’s acceptable in some areas, which is why we’re trying to do something about it.

“This needs short-term and long-term action which is why we’re trying to balance the two.

“We don’t want this to be an unrealistic plan which is unachievable, undeliverable, particularly in year around areas that need immediate improvement.”