This year, we made strong progress in shaping a long-term plan for hospital care across the North East and North Cumbria. Working with the ICB, the Provider Collaborative is leading this work to make sure services are high quality, fair, and sustainable.
To support this, we have:
- Set up a new SACS Board to lead the work, bringing together leaders from hospitals, mental health and ambulance services.
- Looked at future health needs and hospital use to understand where we need to improve.
- Identified services that are under pressure and helped providers work together - for example, to protect children’s gastroenterology services.
- Carried out robust patient insight analysis of feedback from patients and the public to hear about what is important to people across the region when accessing hospital care.
- Listened to over 100 clinical leaders and agreed shared goals for improving care.
- Supported new ways of working, like a single point of access for back pain patients.
- Launched a network for providers and commissioners to share and challenge clinical plans.
We’ve also supported work in key specialties:
- Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery (OMFS):Providers worked together to keep services running during staffing shortages and are now planning for the future.
- Neurology: Services are working to reduce waiting times, improve access, and develop new care pathways—starting with headache services.
Our goal is to create a shared plan for the future of hospital care, shaped by patients, staff, and partners. We want to make sure everyone gets the best care, wherever they live. Our aim is to make sure we have sustainable hospital services across the North East and North Cumbria (NENC) for the next 5 to 10 years. This will be the core focus for the Provider Collaborative as we head into 2025/26 and beyond.
Please see our principles for optimal clinical service sustainability collaboration across the system here.
Our job is to work together on issues that affect every FT. This includes learning from each other, sharing best practice and jointly planning how we deliver services where this makes sense.
We are leading a programme of work to make sure our hospital services are set up well for the future. This is the Strategic Approach to Clinical Services (SACS).
The Integrated Care Board (ICB) has asked us to do this work. It is in line with the region’s Integrated Care Strategy and Clinical Conditions Strategic Plan. Together, we want to plan together for the future and in line with the new 10-year NHS plan.
Our aim is to make sure we have sustainable hospital services across the North East and North Cumbria (NENC) for the next 5 to 10 years. Whilst the SACS work is mostly focused on acute secondary and tertiary services, we are also keen to consider our mental health and ambulance services and, particularly, the valuable connections across all these care sectors.
Click here to view our report on patient insights and patient experience data.
We are pleased to confirm that the ICB Board has this week approved our Strategic Approach to Clinical Services (SACS) framework.
This is a 10 year forward plan for how we will collaboratively develop sustainable hospital care and offset future service vulnerabilities in the region. It will become the vehicle for transformation of our acute hospital sector over the next decade.
All FTs have signed up to the SACS Framework which has been developed with clinical leaders to:
- set some common strategic clinical ambitions for all FTs and system programmes to work towards
- identify clinical areas where joined up work can add most value, and
- have a better sense of system clinical priorities to help us to make better long-term system decisions on investment & infrastructure.
Although SACS focusses primarily on acute hospital care, the framework recognises the vital interface with the ambulance service, mental health teams and primary care.
Please click here to read a short 2-page summary or watch our explainer video: SACS: 10-year framework for sustainable hospital services. The full SACS framework is available to read here.
We are now mobilising our delivery and governance processes to support this work through the SACS Delivery Leadership Group.
The Provider Collaborative is also working with the ICB and comms and engagement leads to mobilise a system wide narrative and engagement plan on how we create 'an NHS fit for the future' in our region. This will position not only the challenges and ambitions for hospital services, but other key areas of care delivery and make sure we involve people as we go.
