Building Back Better

26th August 2020

We’re all aware that 2020 has been a year unlike any other in living memory. The impact of the health crisis has been felt by everyone, everywhere leading to huge changes in the way we live our lives.

It has also led to unprecedented changes for the NHS. Many routine services closed their doors as health workers were temporarily transferred to look after patients seriously ill with Covid-19.

Numerous hospital wards were set aside for the mass influx of patients with Covid-19 as the health service struggled to cope with the number of people with severe symptoms.

Where services were able to continue, changes meant many consultations were carried out by phone or video and, if face-to-face appointments were necessary, fewer took place because of the need for deep cleaning of rooms between patients to keep everyone safe.

Now your NHS is gearing up to re-open many of the services that had to be put on hold.

But it is facing two problems. Firstly, the number of people needing routine treatment has risen sharply because of the lockdown. Secondly, the problems created by the virus have still not gone away.

So we have to find a way to re-open services with your safety as our priority as well as creating a system that means our health professionals can see as many people as possible.

In other words, we need to build a better system than we had before the pandemic. Health and social care organisations in Stockport have got together to work out the best way in which to do this.

For instance, many of you have said that the phone and video consultations really worked for you so we plan to keep doing these to increase the number of people we can treat.

Others understandably struggled with these virtual consultations, so we are planning to increase the number of face-to-face appointments over the coming months to meet different needs.

We will use all the innovations that worked well during the pandemic and find solutions for things that didn’t go as well as we’d hoped.

If you have any thoughts on how we can build back better then please send them to: stockportccg.communications@nhs.net or write to us at NHS Stockport Clinical Commissioning Group, 4th Floor, Stopford House, Stockport, SK1 3XE