The statistics speak for themselves. People living with CaReMe conditions - encompassing cardiovascular disease, kidney disease and metabolic disorders like diabetes - often experience these as interconnected conditions rather than isolated health issues. Yet too often, our care systems have treated them separately, leading to fragmented experiences, frequent handoffs and poorer outcomes for the very people we're trying to serve.
If together, as a health and care partnership, we are to improve outcomes for people living in West Yorkshire and genuinely reduce the impact of multimorbidity on our communities, we must move beyond siloed approaches. Delivering the NHS 10-year plan to benefit people living with multiple long-term conditions requires a joined-up approach. The three priorities of prevention/early detection, community-based care and digital transformation are of critical importance to this group.
About the West Yorkshire CaReMe expert reference group
We hope this group will be an open forum to gain consensus, to sense check system priorities, to reflect on work done and to horizon scan. We have so much expertise in our system, we are fortunate to have world class researchers, expert clinicians, public health specialists and system leaders committed to deliver this work.
Having whole system representation in the membership of the group is imperative. We aim to have good representation from across specialisms, care sectors and roles to prevent ‘group think’ and allow clinical thought leadership to stimulate rich conversation and identify innovative ideas and opportunities. If we are to achieve the NHS Change three shifts, we need to challenge the ‘as is’ and do things differently. This will require constructive dialogue among members as to what recommendations the group make to the ICB to ensure impact and deliverable shifts in the way care is provided. At times, it is highly likely there will be differences of opinion among the membership. As chair and vice chair, our roles are to ensure collective agreements are reached, and to ensure the group leads to real world action and change to care provision for people living with multiple long-term conditions.
We hope this group will innovate, taking inspiration from our populations, from the existing evidence base and from research which is in progress (including in West Yorkshire and internationally). And be open to new ways of doing things and to do so, continuously horizon scanning and looking beyond healthcare. The needs of populations change over time and so the group will need to be dynamic and use intelligence to prepare the Partnership for the current and the future healthcare needs of our population.
Across our system and within our places we already have the building blocks for integrated neighbourhood healthcare. Our group’s clinical leadership approach will shift away from influencing within condition specific pathways to influencing change across multiple long-term conditions, focusing on the intersectionality across conditions. The group will rely on and be fuelled by learning between sectors and specialisms, using this intelligence to ensure the most effective use of our collective resources, true partnership working and integrated neighbourhood health which is truly person centred.
Find out more on the Partnership website.
