
NHS England Chief Executive Simon Stevens and the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced £325m of funding for local NHS 'transformation plans', including millions for new 'primary care hubs'.
The funding will be handed to 15 of the ‘the strongest and most advanced' Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) over the next three years across England, to support a total of 25 local projects. The largest sums will be used for urgent care in Dorset, cancer care in Cumbria and surgery in Greater Manchester.
The new funding aims to deliver faster diagnosis, easier access to mental health care, shorter waits for surgery, expansion of A&Es, and more services in GP surgeries.
The government said that this initial tranche of funding has been targeted at the strongest and most advanced schemes in STPs with the plans rated for their high performance across indicators in hospital performance, patient-focused change and transformation.
The plans include:
Jeremy Hunt said that the new funding will support strong local plans to help the National Health Service modernise and transform care for patients.
He further added that a measure of success of these transformation partnerships is that people can see and feel improvements being made in their local area.
Commenting on the announcement, the Chair of the Royal College of GPs, Professor Helen-Stokes Lampard said that the STPs are crucial to delivering the GP Forward View in England. If they fail to prioritise general practice, it is only a matter of time before GPs and their teams collapse, with the rest of the NHS following closely behind.
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