A Quick Guide to STPs

Article by NHS England South

Devon, Cornwall and Somerset form three out of 44 Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs) across the NHS.

Each brings together the NHS – commissioners and providers – and local authorities to look at reshaping health and social care for the long-term.

With services under pressure, collaboration between organisations will give doctors, nurses and care staff the best chance of success. By working as a system, they can achieve much more than working alone; for example, by reshaping pathways and minimising duplication.

Attempting to improve care for 55 million people, with 440 NHS organisations with 152 local authorities, is a complex task – especially at a time when demand and costs are rising, staff are in short supply and funding is constrained.

Broad proposals have now been published for every part of England. They are all at different stages and now patients, the public and NHS staff must help to develop and shape them.

Our three STPs are unlikely to be consulting formally on substantial change programmes before 2018. That means the rest of this year will be devoted to engagement work with local stakeholders and the wider public, so options can be formed.

Some of this work has already taken place, with workshops across Devon to inform the STP’s Acute Services Review, for example, and the first round now completed in a series of locality-based events in Cornwall.

So what might transformation look like? One STP that has attracted much attention nationally is our neighbour, Dorset. It faces many similar challenges, with a scattered and ageing population, for example, yet considerable progress has been made.

For more about what is happening in Dorset, click here

For more about STPs, including all 44 plans, see: https://www.england.nhs.uk/stps