The government's 10 Year Health Plan committed to creating a neighbourhood health services that gave power to people. It builds on a range of pilot programmes that have been tested in different parts of the NHS, local government and wider system and aims to create the conditions through which local leaders can succeed in delivering the support needed to realise neighbourhood health ambitions.
The Medium Term Planning Framework commits to creating the conditions for making that vision a reality by enabling 4 crucial changes:
- creating the archetypes so local systems have the governance structures to help neighbourhood health succeed
- delivering guidance to create both a common description of neighbourhood health and a common set of outcomes and metrics to help define success
- developing early financial incentives to support local systems to accelerate change
- establishing a new approach to joint working across NHS and local government leaders, including more collaborative strategic commissioning that will help to hard-wire the establishment of neighbourhood health now and into the future
The first 3 changes are set out in this document and the NHS England guidance for population health delivery models. These changes will be supported by the development of integrated care boards (ICBs) into strategic commissioners and this new collaborative way of working with local authorities.
250 new and upgraded neighbourhood health centres (NHCs) will be the place to go for most health needs in every community. They will:
- bring together GP services with a mix of community, local authority and civil society sector services
- allow staff to join up care, which is better for people and communities
- make care easier to access and easier to deliver, while also reducing pressure on other parts of the system
The aims of this approach are to:
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Improve people’s health and care outcomes, reduce health inequalities and help them stay well at home
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Organise services around the person with more convenient, personalised and joined-up care
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Reduce pressure on more acute services - including hospitals and care homes
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Cut waste and duplication
To measure success, during the 2026 to 2027 financial year, as part of developing neighbourhood health plans for the 2027 to 2028 financial year, Health and Wellbeing Board members will need to work with communities, health and care organisations and wider partners on how to establish outcome measures that cover the whole life course of the individual and reflect both health and social care needs.
For the NHS, there are minimum national goals, objectives and metrics. Goals including improving health outcomes, improving access to general practice, improving experience of planned care, better urgent and emergency care performance and improving patient and staff satisfaction.
There will also be local goals and objectices led by HWBs, ICBs and local authorities. These will agree how neighbourhood health can deliver further measurable benefits and how these will develop over time, and address local priorities and health inequalities set out in the local joint strategic needs assessment (JSNA).
Alignment between different parts of the system is critical and changes in these interactions will need to improve routine services, proactive care and alternatives to hospital care.
All of the above will be supported by a National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme to help build capacity, develop infrastrcuture and identify success critera.
All the details can be found here.
VODG's initial repsonse to the framework can be read here.