eHealth Strategy 2011-2017 (Revised July 2012 to include a Sixth Strategic Aim)

3. Our New Policy Context

3.1 Quality Strategy

The strategic agenda for healthcare services in Scotland is set by The Healthcare Quality Strategy for NHSScotland. This is the overarching strategic context for the direction, development and delivery of all healthcare services for the years to come both in terms of securing improvement in the quality of healthcare services, and in achieving the necessary efficiencies. The eHealth Strategy also references the 6 healthcare Quality Outcomes which provide a more comprehensive description of the priority areas for improvement in support of the Quality Ambitions. These provide a context for partnership discussions about local and national priority areas for action.

The 6 healthcare Quality Outcomes are:

• Everyone gets the best start in life, and is able to live a longer, healthier life
  NHSS works effectively in partnership with the public and other organisations to encourage healthier lifestyles and to enable self care, therefore preventing illness and improving quality of life
• People are able to live well at home or in the community
  NHSS plans proactively with patients and with other partners, working across primary, community and secondary care, so that the need for hospital admission is minimised. This is therefore reflected in the outcome indicators on emergency admissions and end of life care
• Healthcare is safe for every person, every time
  Healthcare services are safe for all users, across the whole system
• Everyone has a positive experience of healthcare
  Patients and their carers have a positive experience of the health and care system every time, which leads them to have the best possible outcomes. This should be demonstrable across all equalities groups
• Staff feel supported and engaged
  Staff throughout NHSS, and by extension, their public and third sector partners, feel supported and engaged, enabling them to provide high quality care to all patients, and to improve and innovate
• The best use is made of available resources
  NHSS works efficiently and effectively, making the best possible use of available resources.

The Healthcare Quality Strategy provides the overall strategic context and direction for healthcare in Scotland; however there are many other health and social care strategies and policies which have an eHealth component, some of which are mentioned in this strategy.

3.2 Health and Social Care

Joint working between health, social care and other partners is a crucial aspect of community based health work in Scotland today. However, over the next decade, health and social care organisations and structures will increasingly have to contend with an ageing population, increasing numbers of people with complex long term conditions, budget constraints, increasingly sophisticated (and expensive) treatments and rising expectations of what health and social care services should deliver. This will require NHS Boards and local authorities working even closer together in partnership if services are to be increasingly patient centred, effective and safe. It will also see a greater emphasis being placed on care networks and pathways (e.g. for a specific disease) or through health and social care services that proactively seek to co-ordinate care for people across a range of different health and social care providers.

Together with colleagues in the local authorities, NHSS will develop an IT strategy that not only focuses on health and social care collaboration and integration, but that clearly articulates the technical developments that will be necessary. This will place greater emphasis on partnership working, the need to develop information sharing systems across health and social work to support the delivery of appropriate community based services, and to ensure information is available across health, social services and the third sector to support care for individuals.

3.3 Public Sector IT strategy

The review of public sector IT undertaken by John McClelland^[8] and published on 21 June 2011 sets out a challenging agenda of change for the Scottish Public Sector. Its endorsement of the governance and structural changes that were made in the eHealth Strategy 2008-11 is a welcome recognition of the directional changes about how IT supports public services that were planned in 2007. The report challenges the health sector to go further, both in relation to its engagement with planned "pan public sector" services and contracts and to further embed the national eHealth Governance within NHSS to cover all national information and communication technology projects and services. The eHealth Strategy Board will engage with the wider national initiatives as they are developed and will report within 6 months on further development of the successful eHealth Governance approaches.