Shaping a Healthier Future

The Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire (BSW) Partnership

Health and care organisations across Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire have come together as an Integrated Care System (ICS) taking collective responsibility for the health and wellbeing of the local population.

We have called ourselves the Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire (BSW) Partnership and our vision is to 'work together to empower people to live their best life'.

In early 2020 we published our priorities for the delivery of health and care services but shortly afterwards had to focus our resources on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

We now want to return to these plans in light of the learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic, testing whether our health and care model is still the right one or whether we need to make any changes. Covid has sped up the collaboration between services and we have adopted a number of new ways of working in order to continue caring for local people and keeping them and our workforce safe.

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Introducing the BSW Model of Care

With these new changes, and with your help, we need to review and refresh the guiding principles for our health and care model and ensure it meets the future needs of our population and helps us in our journey of recovery from Covid.

Our health and care model will set out what we want health and care to be like for people in the next ten years and will provide a framework to ensure we take a co-ordinated approach to how we design and plan services across our partner organisations.

The five main components of the model are:

1. Personalised care. This will be at the heart of everything we do. Health and care professionals working together will support people with long-term physical and mental health conditions and complex needs to live well with their health conditions and take charge of their own care.
2. Healthier communities. Communities are the most important part of our model. We want people in every community across Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire to have the information, education, resources and support available so they can live their best life.
3. Integrated local teams. When people need health or care support, local teams involving the NHS, community services, social and care workers and the third (voluntary) sector will work together in teams to provide what local people need.
4. Local specialist services. In the future, much more specialist health and care support will be available closer to where you live. Clinics that take place in hospitals today will be available in places like local health centres and on your local high street. We are investing in more equipment so that we can provide scans and blood tests in more local locations.
5. Specialist centres. Our hospitals will focus more on specialist care. Routine appointments and treatments will happen in community locations, online or over the phone. Hospitals will be for complex treatment and people who are seriously ill or injured. With less routine care happening at hospitals, specialist care will be less disrupted than it is today.

We will make this happen by:

• Coordinating care. We will set up coordination teams to make sure that people can access the services they need and that all our services and teams join up properly. We want to stop people 'falling in the cracks' between different services.
• Investing in our people. Over 34,000 people form part of our collective workforce. We are establishing the BSW Academy which will provide our staff with the tools and training to provide the highest quality care to our local population, create a culture of excellence across our partner organisations and ensure a diverse and inclusive workforce.
• Going digital by default. We will make full use of new digital technology to improve health and care for local people and communities. We know that not everyone can access or use technology and we will make sure everything we do is accessible and inclusive for our diverse communities.
• Building facilities of the future. We will invest resources to improve our main hospitals, to build new community facilities and to buy more state-of-the-art equipment. All of this will allow us to provide more services in more locations, closer to where you live, in appropriate environments.

We are doing all of this so that:

• Everyone is empowered to live their best life.
• When you need support, there will be local integrated teams with more to offer that is local to where you live.
• When you need specialist support, much more of that is available locally without having to go to hospital.
• If you do need to go to hospital, it will be easier to access and there will be less disruption like cancelled appointments or operations.

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New Hospital Programme and the RUH

In October 2019, the second phase of the New Hospital Programme was announced by the Government. It is a long-term programme of investment in health infrastructure, including money for new hospital buildings, investment in the latest technology, and funding to make improvements to existing buildings.

We are delighted that the RUH is one of the trusts across England chosen to be part of the New Hospital Programme, including 7 in the south west.

The Government has already confirmed that the Dyson Cancer Centre, which is now under construction, will benefit from funding. Our vision for our future goes beyond this and we working together to develop our wider plans.

Find out more

See the full BSW Health and Care Model - the slide pack includes more information about the different elements and example patient journeys of how care could be different.

If you have any questions, please contact us with what you'd like to know, and someone from the team will get back to you:

ruh-tr.strategy@nhs.net

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