Setting the bar for improvement in the NHS

The Five Year Forward View (FYFV) which has set many of the directions now being taken in healthcare in England, identified some strategic gaps which need to be addressed. Those gaps relate to the prevention of illness. If we do not take good care of our own health and well being many of the recent gains in life expectancy will fall away. 

We will not be able to fund exciting new treatments if we spend all our health pounds on avoidable illness. The care and quality gap, which is about driving down variations in care, will mean that patients get the best evidence based care possible and more standardisation occurs. 

Finally, the FYFV identified a funding and efficiency gap. If we fail to match reasonable funding levels with wide-ranging and sometimes controversial system efficiencies, the result will be a combination of worse services, fewer staff, deficits, and restrictions on new treatments.1 We all want to ensure that patients are given consistently high quality evidence based care that is good value for money – so how are we progressing?