More control over your care

Evidence shows that when people are well informed about the health care they receive that they also get better more quickly, or that they manage the conditions they have better.

Key actions 

We will:

• support people to understand better their conditions and the choices they can make. This is called “health literacy”.
• focus particularly on supporting disadvantaged communities in making information available to them in ways that are tailored for them
• share the information we have with people, so we can better personalise the care we provide
• ensure that decisions about a person’s healthcare are made together and shared between the health professional and the patient
• support people to access services that we don’t routinely fund, where this meets their needs

Our priorities for 2023/24 

We will help enable people to have more control over their own care through:

• encouraging more people to use the NHS app. This allows people to see their records, manage prescriptions and manage hospital appointments. Already half of all patients registered with a GP practice are registered with the app, and we will seek to increase that number
• developing “virtual wards” for at least 255 people. These allow patients to take health readings and give updates on their symptoms to health professionals, from their own home
• improve access to glucose monitors and insulin pumps for children and young people who have diabetes and who live in the most deprived communities
• support people who have common muscular-skeletal conditions to manage their symptoms better through an app
• continue to increase the numbers of people who have a personal health budget, who have taken part in a shared decision-making discussion and who have been referred to a social prescribing service
• continue to provide a choice over where people receive their planned surgery

What this means for me 

You will have access to technology that means you can manage your condition easily as part of your everyday life. 

This will include apps and monitoring devices to manage appointments, get advice and record important data, such as glucose readings and oxygen levels. 

This means that you can be at home, go to work and enjoy your social time without the need for multiple appointments.

It will even mean you could be cared for at home when in the past you might have needed to stay in hospital.

We will also be much better at helping you understand your condition and to understand how the NHS works so that you can access it at the right time. 

This will especially be the case where English might not be your first language, or you live in an area where we know that health and healthcare isn’t as good.