Introducing our Clinical Services Strategy
We are delighted to share with you our new Clinical Services Strategy. Unlike other organisations, we have deliberately not put a “to and from” date on it, as we want our strategy to be a living document, acknowledging the frequently evolving world of healthcare delivery in the modern NHS.
Following the launch of our new overarching Trust strategy in 2022, we have embarked on a wide programme of engagement and consultation with both internal and external stakeholders, to agree what Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust’s (HDFT’s) clinical services could and should deliver in the coming years. What is clear is that there is deep commitment from our colleagues internally and our partners at a neighbourhood, place and wider system level to 1. support HDFT to continue to deliver the full complement of district general hospital clinical services including a type 1 Emergency Department and an obstetric and midwifery led Maternity Unit, to 2. support HDFT to deliver comprehensive community services at a district and wider county level, and also to 3. support HDFT in our nationally leading position as the largest provider of children’s public health services in England. As a result, our new clinical services strategy willfully support our Trust purpose and ambitions to improve the health and wellbeing of our patients, children and communities.
Our new clinical services strategy will be ongoing evolution rather than revolution, as we are already delivering high quality district general hospital, community and children’s public health services to over 500,000 citizens across the North of England and as a result, no significant changes are planned to our portfolio of acute and planned care services. However, we recognise that we have some unique challenges and therefore opportunities in Harrogate and District, particularly around the way we deliver clinical services to our frail elderly population, which per capita, is one of the largest populations in any district in England.
Our new clinical services strategy will therefore deliver a bigger and more comprehensive model of care closer to home, ensuring better connectivity between acute (including virtual wards), intermediate and integrated services under the new overarching clinical model of HDFT@Home. Another large programme of work which will be undertaken as part of the new clinical services strategy will be further expanding our clinical networks and networked way of working, particularly with our colleagues across WYAAT (West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts) and at York and Scarborough NHS Foundation Trust to ensure we continue to deliver robust and resilient seven day acute services and high quality and timely planned care.
Underpinning our new clinical services strategy will be our investment and commitment to supporting and developing our clinical colleagues at HDFT. We know that working in the NHS is enormously rewarding, but can at times be challenging, and colleagues need to have opportunities for personal development, such as growing and diversifying our clinical leadership through portfolio working in areas such as quality and safety, education, research, innovation and digital.
We will explore new ways of creating and supporting such opportunities to ensure we continue to recruit, retain and manage our talent pipeline, in particular embracing the diversity of clinical roles within HDFT to further enhance multidisciplinary ways of working.
It is a very exciting time for HDFT as we embark on a number of large scale transformation programmes. We are committed to becoming a continuously learning organisation and are working in partnership with a global leader in heathcare improvement to deliver HDFT Impact, our Trust wide improvement programme. A major workstream within HDFT Impact is the implementation of a new electronic patient record system following receipt of significant national funding to improve our digital maturity. Along with the refurbishment of a number of our inpatient areas and additional theatre capacity being planned, we are both looking forward to the next phase of HDFT’s journey as a leading provider of healthcare in Yorkshire and the North of England. We hope you enjoy reading our new clinical services strategy and we would like to offer our grateful thanks to the many colleagues who have contributed to its development.
Click here to see HDFT’s Clinical Services Strategy Brochure