March 2023 edition - Future Health : Guiding the next decade of health care in NSW 2022-2032

Future Health is the strategy for how we deliver our services over the coming decade. It builds on our previous achievements and priorities, and positions our health system to meet the needs of our patients, community and workforce in the coming years. 
 
Find out more about how it was shaped, its key areas of focus and how we are turning the strategy to action.  

Future Health was released on 30 May 2022 and includes a full report, summary document, and strategic framework.

Thousands of individuals – consumers, clinicians and health staff – who were consulted generously shared their views and aspirations for the health system. Those insights shaped the 10-year plan to deliver on our vision for a sustainable health system that delivers outcomes that matter most to the patients and the community, is personalised and is digitally enabled. 

Value based healthcare is integral to how we achieve Future Health. As an organisational model and approach to healthcare design and delivery, it helps us to continuously improve how we deliver effective healthcare so that resources are used optimally and care aligns with better outcomes and experiences. 
Some of the key focus areas in Future Health include: 
  • ensuring our citizens experience a more integrated and seamless health system, regardless of who is providing the services 
  • working with patients and the community to make shared decisions about their care  
  • continuing to strengthen partnerships across government and with the Commonwealth. This means we can leverage shared resources and work together to deliver the best patient outcomes  
  • ensuring more equitable outcomes for rural areas and other vulnerable populations, for example Aboriginal people and CALD communities. 
  • a stronger focus on wellness and prevention and delivering more care in the community  
  • having access to more connected data. 
The principles of value based healthcare – such as moving from outputs to outcomes, measuring and being informed by what matters most to patients, and structuring care around people rather than individual episodes of care – all align with and support these focus areas. 

Key to the success of Future Health will be the ways that we can turn the strategy into action

Since the release of Future Health we have moved into the implementation planning phase. 
This involves working to achieve the key objectives set out in Future Health and monitoring and reporting on progress from 2022 to 2032.  

Some steps we have already taken include: 
  • developing roadmaps for each Strategic Outcome that outline what we aim to achieve in the next 1-3 years, 5 years and 10 years.  
  • establishing strategic governance to oversee progress on Future Health and leading critical cross-functional pieces of work to enable the change that it envisages. This includes identifying executive sponsors and leads for each Strategic Outcome and Key Objective.  
  • updating key documents to align with the Future Health Strategic Framework, for example local health district annual Service Agreements, the NSW Health Performance Framework and local business plans. This will enable each part of our system to be more transparently aligned to the overall vision, goals and outcomes.  

What are the next steps to achieve our vision? 

 The next steps include: 
  • working with Ministry of Health teams, Pillars and NSW Health shared service organisations to commit to the specific actions we will each deliver in the short term.  
  • establishing a Measurement Intelligence Council and developing a comprehensive measurement framework. This will help us to know if we are having an impact on key outcomes and provide data-driven insights to explore focus areas and adapt our strategy as needed.    
  • creating a streamlined reporting system to monitor progress, while also streamlining processes across the system and reducing the reporting burden 
  • developing our communications plans to ensure that the community, NSW Health staff and other key stakeholders continue to be engaged and informed about our journey to Future Health.  
As a result of this work some differences you may notice from day to day include being able to work in a more aligned way across teams with a shared view of our strategic vision, so that everyone knows and is enabled to think about how their work supports Future Health. 
Current as at: Thursday 2 March 2023
Contact page owner: Strategic Reform and Planning