Agenda item

35.1     The Board considered a report on East Sussex Health and Social Care Shared Delivery Plan (SDP) Integration Programme update introduced by Vicky Smith, Programme Director, East Sussex Health and Social Care Transformation. The report provides a summary of progress against the eight priorities contained within the SDP and a report back from the ‘deep dive’ strategy session held on the 6 February 2025.

35.2     Ashley Scarff, Director of Joint Commissioning and ICT Development (East Sussex), NHS Sussex thanked Vicky for the report and commented that good progress is being made against the SDP priorities. There had been a lot of work taking place across the whole health and care system on delayed discharge and progress is being made.

35.3     Mark Stainton, Director of Adult Social Care and Health commented that there had been good progress against the SDP priorities and there has been a sustained improvement on delayed discharge. Additional capacity and funding have been made available to tackle delayed discharge and there have been marginal gains in efficiency. East Sussex has a comparatively unhealthy population which means there is more acute need. The deep dive sessions have been very important in shaping the way the Health and Wellbeing Board (HWB) can take a more stewardship approach to the health and care of residents.

35.4     The Chair echoed the comments made on the progress that is being made on the SDP and the value of the informal deep dive strategy sessions.

35.5     Stephen Lightfoot, Chair of NHS Sussex added his thanks to those delivering the SDP and noted the good progress that had been made particularly around delivering the Integrated Community Teams (ICTs) and the level of engagement in the work to change the model of care. He noted that the work on reducing delayed discharges is challenging. For example, in the week ending 31 January 2025 the East Sussex Healthcare Trust (ESHT) had 177 patients who no longer met the criteria to residue and were medically fit for discharge, which represented almost a third of bed capacity. He added that the report outlines the actions being taken to tackle this issue, but we may need to ask what we are going to do differently in order to have a greater impact on reducing delayed discharge.

35.6     Mark Stainton commented that having 177 patients waiting for discharge is not a good figure but is down from an average of 225 patients. There has been a lot of work on this issue and there has been a sustained improvement in reducing the number of patients experiencing delayed discharge. There is more work to do and there are a number of strands of work underway to improve the flow of patients out of hospital such as early mobilisation whilst in an acute ward. In partnership with the Integrated Care Board (ICB) the Council has worked to improve the flow out of hospital and has increased resources and capacity to facilitate discharge. The long-term solution has two elements. One is to look at whole health population management, and there are some parts of the county where healthy life expectancy is over a decade below retirement age. The other element is to work on admission avoidance which needs to be given an equal focus to the work on delayed discharge. The rapid development of ICTs provides the joined-up approach to health and care needs which will help avoid admissions to hospital.

35.7     Vicky Smith underlined the focus within the ICT development on the multi-disciplinary teamwork which focuses on the proactive care of those people with the most complex needs, who are often the older and most frail within our population and may be subject to delayed discharge once admitted to hospital. This will remain the focus of work going forward.

35.8     The Board RESOLVED to:

1. Note the overall progress made in 2024/25 with the Health and Wellbeing Board (HWB) Shared Delivery Plan (SDP) objectives for East Sussex, including the continuing whole system collaborative action taking place to improve hospital discharge;

2. Note the outcomes from the HWB development session on the building blocks of health as set out in the summary briefing note contained in Appendix 1, and;

3. Agree the key messages and suggested actions in the briefing note, for sharing more widely with organisations and partners.