NHS England published its planning guidance “Delivering the Forward View: NHS Planning Guidance 2016/17 – 2020/21” in December 2015. This set out guidance for local populations to plan for 2016/17 as well as guidance for developing a five year Sustainability and Transformation Plan across wider footprints (for Sheffield this is South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw). 

2016/17 has been highlighted as a year of stability. As well as planning to deliver year one of the Sustainability and Transformation Plan, from October 2016 there are 9 National Must Be Dones that the Commissioning Plan covers. These are as follows:

• Developing a high quality Sustainability and Transformation Plan
• Ensuring the system achieves aggregate financial balance (including implementation of the Lord Carter Provider Productivity Review Programme)
• A plan to address the sustainability and quality of general practice
• Ensuring delivery of access standards for A&E and ambulance waits
• Improve and maintain referral to treatment standards including choice
• Delivery of the cancer waiting times standards and improving one year survival rates
• Achievement and maintenance of two new mental health access targets
• Delivery of local Transforming Care Plans for people with Learning Disabilities
• Delivering improvements in quality, particularly for organisations in special measures, and support to providers to publish annual avoidable mortality rates

The plan is set out in a way that reflects the national guidance and its ambition to address three key gaps:

• Health and Wellbeing
• Quality (including New Models of Care)
• Finance

The plan goes on to describe an enhanced approach to delivering our ambitions for 2016/17 both as an integrated programme of work across the city as well as a Clinical Commissioning Group. Our enhanced approach to assuring performance and delivery is critical to our success in achieving our commissioning intentions.

This plan provides our year one focus for our Sheffield-wide five year strategy that is in development alongside the South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Sustainability and Transformation Plan. It includes a summary of the plan on a single page and then sets out the detail of what that means against each of the nationally described gaps as well as our overall supporting delivery mechanism.

In recognition that the South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Sustainability and Transformation Plan will not be completed until June 2016, in line with nationally set timeframes and that the Sheffield Strategy development will follow the same timeframe this commissioning plan will be reviewed for completeness once these are both available.       

Read the full 2016/17 Commissioning (or Operational) Plan here (we are working on a less-jargony version)

Read about Shaping Sheffield - the development of our Sheffield-wide five year strategy here

Find out more about the South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Sustainability and Transformation Plan here