SIA wants your opinion about the future priorities for NHS services!

The cross-party Health and Social Care Committee has launched an inquiry into ‘Delivering Core NHS and Care Services during the Pandemic and Beyond‘.  This inquiry is looking into the planning and delivery of essential NHS and care services, both during the Coronavirus pandemic and also in the future when we are beyond the pandemic and the NHS and care sectors face up to a new set of strategic challenges.

The aim of the inquiry is to give focus to these upcoming strategic challenges, and give those working in the NHS and care sectors an opportunity to set out what help they will need from Government in meeting them.  The inquiry plans to cover a number of areas, including the following:

• How to achieve a balance between Coronavirus and ‘ordinary’ health and care demand.
• Meeting the wave of demand for health and care services that have been delayed due to the Coronavirus outbreak.
• Meeting extra demand for mental health services as a result of the impacts of lockdown.
• Meeting the needs of rapidly discharged hospital patients with a higher level of complexity.
• Providing healthcare to vulnerable groups who are shielding.
• Supporting mass testing and vaccination once they become available.
• How to ensure that the positive changes that have taken place in health and social care as a result of the pandemic are not lost as services return to normal.

Many of these areas are directly relevant to SCI people and, as you would expect, SIA will be responding to this inquiry.  If you have any views or opinions about the priorities for future NHS service delivery, we would love to hear them, so we can build these views into our formal response.

Deadlines are tight on this inquiry.  Please respond by Tuesday 5 May via email to SIA’s Campaigns Manager, Dave Bracher.

Thank you for your support with this.