A health and care plan which sets out milestones and objectives for the next five years has been branded “unambitious” by a councillor and retired doctor but “realistic” by its authors.
Councillor James Walsh, a former GP (general practitioner) who once stood for the Liberals in a parliamentary election in Hove, criticised the Sussex Health and Care Assembly’s “shared delivery plan”.
Councillor Walsh told a West Sussex County Council meeting that he had seen “masses of such plans” during his decades as a doctor.
They all contained “pages and pages of worthy ambition (and) aspirations and virtually none of it has been delivered in that time”.
He said that the latest plan, entitled Improving Lives Together, was “extraordinarily unambitious” as 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 per cent.
Councillor 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.
Councillor 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 specific aim that, by March next year, no more than 548 cancer patients would wait more than 62 days for treatment.
Councillor Walsh said that no patient should be waiting that long because 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”.
He highlighted the national staffing and funding problems faced by the NHS, adding: “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.”
The plan – the new health and care assembly’s “integrated care strategy” – was under discussion at the county council’s Health and Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committee.
Tomorrow (Wednesday 28 June) it is due to be discussed by Brighton and Hove City Council’s Health and Wellbeing Board at Hove Town Hall.
Health chiefs are expected to approve the plan at an NHS Sussex board meeting on Wednesday 5 July.
At the West Sussex meeting, Tom Gurney, chief communications officer at NHS Sussex, said that many the points raised by Dr Walsh were “the very reason we need the plan in the first place”.
He said that the main 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 said: “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 areas that need immediate improvement.”
I agree with Cllr. Walsh. There are loads of innovative ideas out there, that, if given oxygen, could dramatically help change the paradigm of our current model of healthcare. I’m certainly going to be challenging NHS Sussex with putting words into action with a few projects this year.