Free Nursing Dissertations - Some Of The General National Targets Given In The Nhs Plan Were: More And
Some of the general National Targets given in the NHS plan were:
more and better paid staff using new ways of working
reduced waiting times and high quality care centered on patients
improvements in local hospitals and surgeries.
The monitoring of progress will be overseen by several independent organizations controlling the NHS and these include the Department of Health that is responsible for setting national standards, matched by regular inspection of all local health bodies by an independent inspectorate, and the Commission for Health Improvement. The NHS plan also states the following changes and targets:
For the first time social services and the NHS will come together with new agreements to pool resources. There will be new Care Trusts to commission health and social care in a single organisation. This will help prevent patients particularly old people falling in the cracks between the two services or being left in hospital when they could be safely in their own home.
Pooling of resources and using a coordinating approach to bring health and social care services together seems to have been the major first step towards initiating a collaborative approach within the NHS work culture.
Most current NHS targets were agreed under the 2000 NHS Plan. Access targets (such as those on waiting times) run until 2008 while the outcome targets (such as those on cancer, coronary heart disease) run from 2000 to 2010 (DoH, 2004).
In this section we discussed the key policies, national targets, changes in the targets and the organisational changes following implementation of policies and targets. We discussed the importance of the NHS plan which seems to have initiated the need for a collaborative approach through the Modernisation agenda of the NHS that aims to optimise the levels and quality of services.
The key issues and objectives we highlighted are related to a growing need to change services provided and improve the quality of care that patients receive. The emphasis on collaborative working and multi-disciplinary approach to patient care seems also to be directed towards optimising information and knowledge management. Knowledge and information mangement have been identified as important factors in improving services, optimizing multiagency and multiprofessional collaboration and co-ordination and providing higher levels of quality of care to patients.
In the next section we will consider the evidential studies on collaborative working and the impact and influence of procedural policies and structural changes on NHS management approach and care orientation.
