Consultation seeks a broad response

The consultation was launched on 29 January at London’s St Thomas’ Hospital, where Sir David Nicholson, NHS CEO, and CEO of the new NHS Commissioning Board; Duncan Selbie, CEO of Public Health England, and Mike Farrar, Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation, all spoke in support. As HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports, the four-month consultation’s aim is ‘to capture the thoughts of the entire health system’ – the NHS, the public health sector, local authorities, the new Health and Wellbeing Boards, and Clinical Commissioning Groups – ‘to help shape the scope and ambitions for a sustainable health service to 2020’.

Speaking at the launch event, keynote speaker, David Nicholson, said that, with the NHS set to face significant increases in demand for care in the shortto- medium term, and the new healthcare commissioning structure just months away, the consultation’s launch was ‘extremely timely’. It was, he told a sizeable audience gathered in the imposing Governor’s Hall at St Thomas’ Hospital, ‘an ideal moment’ for everyone in the service to ‘come together to create a far more effective and efficient approach to health and care, which is environmentally, financially, and socially, sustainable’. He emphasised, however, that taking forward an effective, deliverable future NHS Sustainable Development Strategy – a launch of the 2014-20 Strategy is planned for next January – would require close collaboration between the many different organisations that are set to provide health, public, and social care, within the new ‘landscape’.

NHS’s ‘unique duty’