Earlier today the Government published the 10-Year Health Plan for England, ‘Fit for the Future.’ Whilst we know that the plan will focus on the 3 ‘radical’ shifts from hospital to community, analogue to digital and sickness to prevention what we don’t fully know yet is what the plan means for kidney patients in England. As we work through the detail of the plan over the coming days and weeks and as more details are released, we will keep you updated on what we think this plan means for kidney patients and families.

This is what we know so far.

Hospital to Community

The Neighbourhood Health Service model will bring care into local communities and bring professionals together into patient-centred teams. The model will be based on the preventative principle that care should happen locally, in a patient’s home, if possible, in a neighbourhood health centre where needed and in hospital when necessary. We hope that this will support our campaign to improve access to home therapies for those that choose it.

We also understand that a huge barrier to patients being supported to receive home therapies is due to the way the funding works for this in ‘block contracts.’ The Plan has a commitment to ‘deconstruct block contracts’ which we hope will offer some opportunities to reduce this barrier and again support more patients to have the choice to receive therapies at home.

Sickness to Prevention

A big focus of the Plan is to support patients to be in good health for longer, through prevention and early identification. One action in the Plan is to run ‘Prevention Accelerators’ in selected Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) to focus on community-led methods to tackle variation in uptake of high impact cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes interventions. We know that CVD and diabetes are closely linked to the development of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and we hope that interventions that support the early treatment of CVD and diabetes will prevent people from developing CKD and support those living with CKD from deteriorating for as long as possible. 

Analogue to Digital

The Plan recognises the potential benefits that digital technology can bring to improved healthcare and explains that ‘continuous monitoring to help make proactive management of patients and allow clinicians to reach out at the first signs of deterioration to prevent an admission to hospital.’ Whilst we don’t yet know what these technologies will look like we will continue to advocate for improvements in kidney care and hope that this will lead to better support to patients to manage their disease and access timely and appropriate support.

Finally, we recognise the Plan’s commitment to reforming the National Quality Board which will be tasked to develop modern service frameworks with early priorities to include CVD. NKF, along with other charities are working to highlight the need for a National Service Framework for chronic kidney disease and keep kidney care high up the agenda as a priority for improving healthcare and we hope this new 10-Year Health Plan for England provides opportunity for this.