An ‘urgent care village’ is to be created in Derbyshire as part of a £325 million push to modernise NHS care provision announced by Jeremy Hunt.
Speaking to the King’s Fund on 19 July, the Health Secretary announced a new raft of capital investment for local projects intent to help the NHS to modernise and transform care for patients.
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In Derbyshire, up to £30 million will be poured into the creation of a primary care-centred ‘urgent care village’ which will pool together GP services, a frailty clinic and mental health services at the Royal Derby Hospital. Its purpose is to get patients to the right care first time without needed to get to A&E.
This initial round of funding has been targeted at the strongest and most advanced schemes in sustainability transformation partnerships (STPs). All the plans have been developed locally and the funding was secured in March’s Spring Budget.
Chief operating officer for Derby Teaching Hospitals Sharon Martin said: ‘We are delighted to receive this funding to help us transform services in Derbyshire to support providing people with the right care, in the right place.
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‘NHS England’s confidence in our plans to change the way we deliver urgent care for our patients in southern Derbyshire will enable us to drive forward collaboration with other services to improve care.
‘This investment gives us a significant opportunity to transform our emergency services at the Royal Derby Hospital to help us meet growing demand and maintain the highest quality standards of urgent care.’
Among the 15 other beneficiaries of this first round of funding, hospitals in Greater Manchester hoping to improve urgent care in four key hubs across the city, and in Cumbria a new cancer centre based in Carlisle is intended to improve access to chemo- and radiotherapy.
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Mr Hunt said: ‘“A measure of success of these transformation partnerships is that people can see and feel improvements being made in their local area – there are already excellent examples of this across the country and this money will allow them to go further and faster.’
The government has pledged more funding for STPs in the upcoming Autumn Statement.