Report to:

East Sussex Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (HOSC)

Date of meeting:

12 December 2024

By:

Deputy Chief Executive

Title:

NHS Sussex Winter Plan 2024/25

Purpose:

To provide an overview of the NHS Sussex Winter Plan 2024/25.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The Committee is recommended to consider and comment on the report.

1.            Background

1.1.        Winter planning is an annual national requirement of the NHS to ensure that the local health and social care system has sufficient plans in place to effectively manage the capacity and demand pressures anticipated during the Winter period. The Sussex System Winter Plan is a whole system health and social care plan, recognising the interdependencies of the system to meet the needs of the local population. The Plan period runs this year from November 2024 to March 2025 and was approved by the NHS Sussex Integrated Care Board on 27th November 2024. 

1.2.        Winter Plans are developed with input from partners across the system including local authorities, providers, commissioners and the voluntary sector. Underpinning the overarching Sussex system winter plan, each provider Trust has developed their own winter plans and have contributed to the system wide demand and capacity modelling.

1.3.        This report highlights the Sussex wide and East Sussex specific elements of the plan. It should be noted that the system has continued to see increased demand across primary, secondary, community and mental health services. Over the winter months this can become increasingly challenging as there are seasonally driven increases in illness such as acute respiratory illness, flu, Covid-19, and norovirus, together with the impact of cold weather and the ongoing impact from the cost-of-living pressures which constrains the ability of the most vulnerable in our population to keep themselves well.  

 

2.         Supporting information

2.1.        The key focus of the NHS Sussex plan is action to support people to stay well and to maintain patient safety and experience. There is a focus on five key areas as part of this:

·         Prevention and case finding to support people to stay well and to target additional support to our most vulnerable populations to prevent hospital admission where possible.

·         Same day urgent care to help maximise access to urgent help for local people, reducing the need for people to attend Emergency Departments.

·         Improvements in discharge to support patient flow to help people to get home from hospital in a timely way and to ensure good access to inpatient beds when people need them.

·         Sound operational management to ensure we have robust mechanisms in place with clear coordination across the system and rapid routes for escalation where required.

·         Oversight, governance and escalation to ensure we have the right oversight in place.

2.2.        A summary of the NHS Sussex Winter Plan 2024/25 is attached as Appendix 1, which highlights the Sussex-wide and East Sussex specific approaches and aims to provide information to HOSC that the health and social care needs of the local population will be met over the winter period.

2.3.        The full Winter Plan as approved by the ICB is attached as Appendix 2 for information. This includes summaries of provider trust winter plans in the final pages.

 

3.         Conclusion and reasons for recommendations

3.1       HOSC is recommended to consider and comment on the NHS Sussex Winter Plan.

 

PHILIP BAKER
Deputy Chief Executive

 

Contact Officer: Patrick Major, Scrutiny and Policy Support Officer
Email: patrick.major@eastsussex.gov.uk