PRESS RELEASE : Health and Social Care Secretary visits hospital staff in Epping [August 2024]

The press release issued by the Department of Health and Social Care on 1 August 2024.

Wes Streeting’s visit was part of a series of planned engagements across regions in England.

• Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting, visited St Margaret’s Hospital in Epping, West Essex, as part of an ongoing series of engagements with NHS trusts across England
• Integrated teams of NHS, social care and voluntary sector staff demonstrated their work to bring acute care into the community through the use of virtual ‘hospital at home’ wards and a specially equipped ‘falls car’
• Following the visit, Wes Streeting also visited a GP surgery in Harlow before holding a town hall event with health leaders in the region

The Health and Social Care Secretary today (1 August 2024) visited St Margaret’s Hospital in Epping to see how NHS staff are using innovative technology to monitor patients at home and prevent unnecessary hospital admissions. He was also joined by NHS Chief Executive, Amanda Pritchard.

Prior to the tour of the hospital, Wes Streeting met the trust’s falls response team, which travels in a specially equipped ‘falls car’ to patients who have fallen at home – preventing visits to A&E. They ensure an emergency care package is put in place if needed before leaving the patient, and will also make a follow-up call 48 hours after visiting.

During his visit, Mr Streeting met staff from the hospital’s Care Coordination Centre and the ‘hospital at home’ hub, which reduces unnecessary A&E admissions and helps people to be discharged home quickly and safely. Different teams within the department work together to decide whether out-of-hospital care could be more appropriate for a patient’s needs, further reducing the pressures on A&E.

Mr Streeting then visited the Ross Practice GP surgery in Harlow to meet with staff following the government’s announcement to recruit hundreds of newly qualified GPs as part of immediate action to fix the front door of the NHS.

The visit to Epping was part of a series of planned engagements across regions in England over the coming weeks, with today’s visit focused on the government’s ambition to bring care back into the community.

Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said:

The NHS is broken but it’s not beaten. The new government can’t fix it alone, we need to work together with frontline NHS staff to turn it around. It was great to visit St Margaret’s Hospital and the Ross Practice today to see what’s working well, so we can take the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS.

We recognise the scale of the challenge and know there is a lot more to do, and we continue to work closely with trusts to address the biggest issues gripping our health services.

Amanda Pritchard, NHS Chief Executive, said:

It was great to meet staff at St Margaret’s Hospital and the Ross GP Practice today to hear about the vast range of work they are doing to improve patient care.

Helping more people to stay well at home needs strong and well-connected health and care services in every community, and our visit today provided a valuable insight as we develop a 10-year plan to make the NHS fit for the future.

Dr Jane Halpin, Chief Executive of the Hertfordshire and West Essex integrated care board (ICB), said:

We were delighted to welcome the new Health and Social Care Secretary to Epping today. He was able to meet the dedicated teams of health, social care and voluntary sector staff, all working together in innovative ways to ensure patients get the expert care they need at the right time and in the right place.

We are proud of our groundbreaking approach which supports often frail or elderly patients and their families through a mixture of face-to-face care in their own homes, the latest health monitoring technology and the practical help they need to recover.

Paul Scott, Chief Executive of Essex Partnership University NHS foundation trust, said:

We were delighted to meet the new Health and Social Care Secretary and share with him our work with a range of partners in West Essex to deliver safe, hospital equivalent care at home.

Putting patients at the heart of everything we do is central to our approach, and our integrated teams work closely together to give them the holistic, personalised care they need to get well and maintain their independence.

During the staff engagement at St Margaret’s Hospital, the Health and Social Care Secretary had the chance to speak to a junior doctor, following the new pay deal that was announced on Monday. If accepted, this offer will deliver an additional pay rise of between 3.71% and 5.05%, averaging 4.05%, on top of their existing pay award for 2023 to 2024. This will be backdated to April 2023.

The Health and Social Care Secretary has made it a top priority since taking up his role to reach an agreement to bring an end to strike action – speaking to the BMA junior doctors committee (JDC) on his first day in government and meeting with them regularly over the last 3 weeks.

Mr Streeting added:

Strikes have cost patients 1.4 million cancelled appointments and taxpayers £1.7 billion. That’s why I’ve been speaking to junior doctors since I became Health Secretary and our newly agreed pay offer that paves the way for an end to the industrial action that has affected so many people. We cannot have any more disruption and cancelled appointments.

I’m committed to resetting the relationship between junior doctors and their government, so we can work together to rebuild our NHS.

Closing off the visit, Mr Streeting held a town hall event at Harlow College with health leaders across the region.

Today’s visit is the latest example of the government’s determination to get to the bottom of the issues facing our broken health service. The Health and Social Care Secretary has already ordered a full investigation by Lord Ara Darzi to uncover the state of the NHS and recently announced a full review of the New Hospital Programme, which he stated was ‘unfunded’ and ‘set to a fictional timeline’. The government has committed to producing infrastructure improvements that are fully costed and deliverable.

The Health and Social Care Secretary’s engagement with staff and patients across the NHS will help shape the government’s 10-year plan to fix the NHS, due to be published next year.