National Level
- Care Quality Commission (CQC): An independent regulatory body for all health and social care service providers, reporting to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. It registers care providers and monitors, inspects, and rates their services.
- NHS England (NHSE): Provides unified national leadership for the NHS, overseeing funding, planning, delivery, transformation, and performance of NHS healthcare in England. It merged with NHS Improvement, Health Education England, and NHS Digital as per the Health and Care Act.
Regional Level
- NHS England Regional Teams: Seven regional teams responsible for the quality, financial, and operational performance of all NHS organisations in their region, working with Integrated Care Systems (ICSs).
- Integrated Care Systems (ICSs): Partnerships of organisations that plan and deliver joined-up health and care services. Established on a statutory basis, they include integrated care partnerships (ICP), integrated care boards (ICB), local authorities, place-based partnerships, and provider collaboratives.
- Academic Health Science Network (AHSN): Fifteen regional networks aimed at aligning education, clinical research, informatics, innovation, training, and education in healthcare.
Strategic Priorities and Operational Planning (2023/24)
- Mental Health Implementation Plan: Focused on localizing and realigning mental health and learning disability inpatient services, with a particular emphasis on improving diagnostic pathways for autism and increasing the GP learning disability registers.
- Improving Health and Reducing Inequalities: Plans for the prevention of ill-health, tackling health inequalities with a focus on high-intensity use services, children and young people, and a quality improvement approach to address health inequalities.
- Investing in Workforce: Emphasis on improved staff experience and retention, flexible working practices, regional multi-professional education, and training investment plans.
- Digital Transformation: Measures to measure digital maturity and put in place data architecture for population health management and digital tools for patient support.
Government’s Mandate to NHS England (2023)
- Cancer Outcomes: Improving survival rates and diagnostic capacity, with emphasis on early diagnosis and personalized care.
- Patient Choice: Strengthening patient rights to choose healthcare providers, ensuring information and processes support this.
A&E and Ambulance Performance: Delivering the urgent and emergency care recovery plan, including improving response times and expanding capacity. - GP Access: Ensuring timely appointments for patients, with a focus on urgent needs and modernizing general practice access.
Accountabilities and Responsibilities
- Integrated Care Boards (ICBs): Develop and oversee joint strategies and plans with partners to meet national commitments and local health service priorities.
- NHS England: Supports ICBs, NHS providers, and local partners, with responsibility to Parliament for NHS performance and regulatory powers.
- Annual Assessments: NHS England has a duty to annually assess ICBs, with a focus on self-reflection and dialogue.
Medium-term Priorities and Long-term Aims of NHS England
- Objectives: Include stopping avoidable illness, shifting to digital and community-based approaches, sharing best practices, strengthening patient services, and supporting local partners.
- Long-term Aims: Aim at improving life expectancy, quality, safety, access, equity, and value for taxpayers’ money.
The structure of the NHS in 2024 reflects a complex and dynamic system, aiming to address both current healthcare challenges and long-term health outcomes.