Nuffield Trust responds to announcement of 29 'vanguard' areas to implement the Five Year Forward View

Nigel Edwards, Chief Executive of the Nuffield Trust, comments on the announcement of the 29 'vanguard' areas, noting the real test will be expanding beyond these areas that already have pioneering practice.

Press release

Published: 10/03/2015

Commenting on the announcement from NHS England about the launch of the ‘vanguard’ areas to implement the Five Year Forward View, Nigel Edwards, Chief Executive of the Nuffield Trust said:

“The Forward View set out an impressive vision of the different approaches that local areas can take to adapt for the future, and today’s announcement kick-starts the transition to these approaches. Many of the 29 areas chosen by NHS England are well known within the NHS for containing organisations already at the cutting edge of health and social care. In that sense there are no real surprises: these are organisations that have a head start in developing new approaches to better meet the needs of their local communities.

The real test for this project is how it is spread more widely to areas where such pioneering practice doesn’t exist. 
Nigel Edwards, Chief Executive at the Nuffield Trust

“The real test for this project, therefore, is how it is spread more widely to areas where such pioneering practice doesn’t exist. Achieving the kind of radical change that the NHS England Five Year Forward View outlines will require doctors, nurses and social workers to work together in fundamentally different ways. This kind of change takes time and is heavily dependent on whether or not they have trusting, functioning relationships.

“It is tempting to focus on organisations and structures, but the real gains will come from breaking down ways of working that are the product of decades of operating in silos. We need to give local areas time to try new approaches, the space to learn from mistakes, and, crucially, the chance for these approaches evaluated in a rigorous and consistent way.”

Notes to editors

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