Kings Fund Annual conference 2021
Last week ADI Health exhibited at the Kings Fund Annual conference 2021. The conference included a wide variety of sessions, varying from discussions about meeting the needs of the health and care workforce, integrated care, social care reform and tackling the backlog. There were several themes that reappeared during the sessions, one of course was the impact that COVID has had on the NHS but there was also a strong focus on the importance of data and how technology can help collate the data. There was also an emphasis on tackling health inequalities and how the NHS can further support a overworked and tired workforce.
Amanda Pritchard shared her vision for the health and care sector, highlighting her 3 priorities for ICS’s
- Understand populations & develop plans to tackle health inequalities & improve prevention
- Focus on recovery of services (& tackle backlog)
- Workforce planning – to enable us to achieve our ambitions
ADI Health exhibited at this event, which enabled us to present to delegates how MyPathway Waiting List Management can support their service tackle the backlog.
Covid-19 has such a huge impact on the NHS ‘business as usual’ care delivery, with millions of patients suffering from the cancellation of their procedures and treatment. A key session at the conference was “tackling the backlog”. This explored how an already-stretched NHS can deal with unprecedented demand and discussed solutions for catching up and restoring normal care delivery, while ensuring the needs of the most vulnerable patients are taken care of. Siva Anandaciva, Chief Analyst from The King’s Fund, highlighted 7 key points on how to tackle the backlog. Two main takeaways from this discussion were that we must be realistic with timeframes, the backlog will not resume to pre-covid levels or national performance standards within 2-3 years, it is more likely to take 5-8 years. If the timeframe is realistic, organisations are likely to make wiser investment decisions, focusing on improvement rather than setting up the system to fail. Workforce was a continuous theme throughout this conference and again it was highlighted as crucial to tackling waiting lists. Unless there are plans in place to grow and sustain the clinical workforce of the NHS, the plan for recovery will just be an ambition.
The Kings Fund Annual conference 2021 bought together healthcare professionals to connect, learn and share. At ADI Health we connected with many different organisations, we learnt more about how the healthcare sector are adapting to all the challenges they have faced and we shared with delegates how MyPathway Waiting List Management can support the backlog.