Our priorities
The NHS Black Country Joint Forward Plan has been developed by working with partners and our local population. It sets out our challenges, health needs, strategic vision, and strategic priorities over the next five years.
We have refreshed our NHS Joint Forward Plan - read our new 2024 plan.
The main aim of our plan is to improve the health outcomes for local people, making the Black Country a healthier place with healthier people and healthier futures.
We have identified six priority areas in our plan:
Priority 1 - Improving access and quality of services
The core function of the NHS is to provide quality healthcare to the population in a timely manner. We know that across the country, and within the Black Country, there is more that we can do to ensure that where required the public have access to an appropriate intervention, and for that intervention to be of the highest quality possible. Our ambition is to improve accessibility and the quality of such care across all parts of our system.
Priority 2 - Care closer to home
The NHS has seen more people than ever before in recent years, across all parts of the NHS. Beds within our hospitals are almost always full and our GP practices have never been so busy. Our ambition is to ensure that our hospital beds are available for those people that need them, and that we have appropriate service provision in the community to care for people where appropriate.
Priority 3 - Preventing ill health and tackling health inequalities
As we know, prevention is better than cure. We intend to work with partners to invest in preventative services, where we can, to reduce the pressure on the NHS. Also, we are committed to ensuring that the health inequalities we face within the Black Country are reduced effectively.
Priority 4 - Giving people the best start in life
In order to ensure that children and young people in our communities have the best start in life, we will refocus our efforts, with partners, on delivering improved access and services for this population.
Priority 5 - Best place to work
It is vitally important that we have a vibrant, effective workforce across all parts of the Black Country system if we are to achieve our priorities. Currently, there are approximately 60,000 colleagues working across health and social care in the Black Country and we know that for us to thrive, we need to look after our workforce and become a place where people want to work.
Priority 6 - Fit for the future
This new priority recognises that the Black Country health system needs to change the way that it works to embrace the opportunities and meet the challenges it faces. This includes the need to be more productive and cost-effective to meet our financial challenges. We also need to recognise the power of our people and communities and support our Places and providers to work better together. We need to reduce the carbon footprint of the NHS and be more sustainable. All of this will require strong, sustainable leadership and enabling functions.
Our ICB will support the purpose of the Black Country Integrated Care System (ICS) to include:
- Working with our ICS partners we have four key aims:
- improving outcomes in population health and health care
- tackling inequalities in outcomes, experience and access
- enhancing productivity and value for money
- help the NHS support broader social and economic development.
- Our Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) has developed a system wide strategy - read the strategy online.
Our 2024/2025 corporate objectives
Our corporate objectives can be found in the ICB Board papers from May 2024.
The objectives, set against themes of the four purposes of an ICS, are summarised below:
- Lead development of 'Mid-Term Review' of Joint Forward Plan (JFP) [links to Priority 1]
- Review of clinical strategy and implementation plan to support JFP Mid-term Review [links to Priority 1]
- Ensure communications and involvement support of the JFP Mid-term Review and its implementation [links to Priority 1]
- Further develop and embed ICB role in oversight and assurance of the system [links to Priority 1]
- Develop and publish 2024/25 Operational Plan [links to Priority 1]
- Develop a system wide Digital Cyber Strategy to strengthen system infrastructure resilience and mitigate against vulnerabilities [links to Priority 5]
- Develop the Digital Innovations programme through the sub-group of the ICS Digital Programme Board [links to Priority 6]
- Develop the System Artificial Intelligence programme through the sub-group of the ICS Digital Programme Board [links to Priority 5]
- Primary Care Transformation: To design and implement the case to develop a sustainable model for primary care including *Produce a well-defined future operating model (blueprint) for primary care that informs the integrated community ‘out of hospital’ model [links to Priority 2]
- Develop and refresh the system wide Digital Strategy and milestone delivery plan to level up the system digital provision [links to Priority 1]
- Delivery Plan for Recovering Primary Care (PCARP)/Quality: To continue to improve quality and access to primary care through the implementation of primary care recovery plan and joint working with the quality team [links to Priority 2]
- Deliver and report to Board on 2024/25 Operational Plan (performance) [links to Priority 1]
- Development and implement system wide Clinical Leadership Model [links to Priority 1]
- Delivery of the ICB Quality Strategy (Action Plan) [links to Priority 1]
- Pharmacy, Optometry and Dentist (POD) delegation: To ensure the effective assimilation of POD into the core business of the ICB [links to Priority 2]
- Ensure there are arrangements to involve people and communities in our planning and where there are service changes [links to Priority 1]
- ICP governance including relationship with Health and Wellbeing Boards, Scrutiny, ICB and local authority functions clarified within terms of reference and embedded [Priority 6]
- Implement ICS Operating Model [Priority 6]
- Support the delivery of the financial reconciliation process (FRP) with communications and involvement [Priority 6]
- Ensure quality impact assessments (QIAs) are undertaken for recommendation of FRP [Priority 6]
- Develop financial plans for 2024/25 (ICB and System) [Priority 6]
- Deliver and report to Board on 2024/25 financial plan [Priority 6]
- Develop five year financial plan for ICB and ICS [Priority 6]
- Development of system-wide Estates Strategy [Priority 6]
- Ensure clinical strategy and 2024/25 outcomes reflects appropriate ambition on inequalities, better integration across physical and mental health services, encompassing all age groups, and better use of digital enablers [Priority 3]
- Population Outcomes Framework agreed, embedded across Place [Priority 1]
- Health Economics roadmap to shifting resource allocation from curative/treatment to prevention [Priority 3]
- Develop a clear plan for health inequalities resource allocation and clinical leadership resources at each financial planning round [Priority 3]
- Refresh existing People Strategy, aligning to the national People Plan [Priority 5]
- Develop a Black Country workforce plan in line with the ambitions of the NHS Workforce Plan [Priority 2]
- Continue working with organisational development (OD) partner to design ICB and ICS OD strategy to inform Joint Forward Plan (JFP) refresh/Financial reconciliation process (FRP) [Priority 6]
- Co-produce system Inclusive Talent Management Strategy [Priority 6]
