Introducing Integrated Care Systems: joining up local services to improve health outcomes

a) DHSC and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities should, by April 2023, establish transparent arrangements across government and with wider stakeholders to tackle the drivers of poor health outcomes, including education, employment, benefits, and transport;

b) to assist ICSs with their workforce planning, as well as providing public accountability on an issue crucial to the future of the NHS, DHSC should publish, by December 2022, both the Health Education England-led assessment of the strategic drivers for the health and care workforce, and the long term NHSE plan for growing and retaining the NHS workforce to support NHS service delivery. NHSE should then publish progress updates at least annually setting out whether and how the plan has changed in the past year, and what progress has been made against the plan?s objectives;

c) by April 2023, NHSE should set out plans to identify unavoidable cost differences in the provision of healthcare by different trusts and take account of them in the formula for allocating funding to ICBs. This should include a timetable for addressing them and changes it has made to the 2023-24 allocation process;

d) by April 2023, NHSE should fully align its oversight of ICBs with the strategic objectives for ICSs. Specifically, it should: ? agree with ICBs what they can realistically deliver against each of the four purposes, taking account of individual ICSs? local context and priorities; ? ensure its annual assessments of ICBs? performance include an evidence-based assessment of the effectiveness of joint working and delivery with partners beyond the NHS, as well as their delivery of its core NHS national priorities;

e) NHSE should evaluate whether it can draw lessons from the simplified system of commissioning and contracting arrangements put in place for the NHS during 2020-21 and 2021-22, and streamline the requests made to front-line providers while retaining the information necessary for effective governance.