A Christmas message from our Chair Dr Kathy McLean

At this time of the year, I enjoy thinking back over the successes and challenges of the last 12 months and start to make plans and ambitions for January.

I joined the Derby and Derbyshire ICB in May, but already I’ve met so many of the wonderful people and teams working on improving health and care in the county.

It’s been a fantastic eight months getting to know the work of the ICB, its Board and the wider partners of Joined Up Care Derbyshire.

A highlight for me so far, was attending the ICB staff away day in November, where so many colleagues came together to celebrate the hard work you all put in every single day and looking to our future aims and priorities.

Improving population and healthcare outcomes, reducing inequalities, enhancing productivity and supporting broader social and economic development are the four areas of focus for of all our work.

But planning for how collectively we can ‘lift our gaze’ is so crucial and it was wonderful to see people energized by the thought of switching from reactive to proactive models of care and delivering more of the aims in our Integrated Care Strategy.

The publication of Lord Darzi’s ‘three shifts’, the launch of the Ten Year Health Plan and the Change NHS campaign has offered us fresh focus on the ambition to reach out into communities with our engagement, test our local plans and really listen to people’s views.

Of course, there are always challenges and we’re trying to do this work against a backdrop of tight resource, stretched emergency services and the start of winter illnesses which make all our services incredibly busy. I fully recognise the challenge for so many of our frontline workers and know we’re all doing our best to support them however we can in our roles.

Along with getting to know our clinical and commissioning colleagues and teams, I’ve also visited some wonderful proactive prevention work out in the community.

These models of care, delivered by wider system partners, are helping take the pressure off acute services. From cradle to grave, our crucial voluntary sector and not for profit organisations are helping people before their problems escalate.

They are supporting people with basic signposting on issues the NHS simply hasn’t got the resource to tackle, such as housing, isolation and debt. These ‘wider determinants’ have a huge impact on our health and needs and should not be overlooked.

This is helping to reduce the pressure on our doctors, nurses and clinical teams and I’m looking forward to seeing much more next year.

Thank you so much to everyone who works in health and care in Derby and Derbyshire, for your dedication, hard work and compassion. 

I wish you all a very merry Christmas if you’re celebrating the Christian tradition, and if not, I hope you enjoy a well-earned break and get a chance to relax and recharge.

I look forward to everything the New Year brings and am delighted to be a part of the Derby and Derbyshire system and all of its exciting work now and in the future.