NHS Cheshire and Merseyside is celebrating its first anniversary in the same week as the NHS turns 75.
On 5 July 2023 we mark 75 years of the National Health Service. Treating over a million people a day in England, the NHS touches all of our lives. When it was founded in 1948, the NHS was the first universal health system to be available to all, free at the point of delivery.
NHS Cheshire and Merseyside became one of 42 Integrated Care Boards (ICB) on 1 July 2022 tasked with improving patient outcomes by working closely with partners, including Local Authorities, to bring services closer together and reduce unfair differences in outcomes for the region’s communities.
A year on and NHS Cheshire and Merseyside’s residents are benefitting from some significant improvements:
- Our Cheshire and Merseyside Surgical Centre is treating even more patients, including those with cancer, thanks to a new, state-of-the-art £2m Da Vinci robot. The surgical centre, which opened at Clatterbridge Hospital in November 2022, was the first of a number of new surgical hubs to open in the North West, aiming to tackle the backlog of people waiting for planned surgery due to COVID-19.
- Improvements made to diagnostic tests are reducing waiting times, leading to quicker results and making services easier to access for patients. We’re one of the few integrated care boards that has a dedicated programme for diagnostics. Working together with our partners, we’re looking at over 100 tests to see how they can be improved. Cheshire and Merseyside has one of the most advanced programmes of community diagnostic centres nationally, offering faster access to vital health tests and scans including for suspected cancer. Together, the new community diagnostic centres will deliver an additional 380,000 diagnostic tests this year for the NHS in Cheshire and Merseyside.
- We’ve established new services and ways of working across all NHS and non-NHS organisations involved in improving mental health and wellbeing. To date, more than £1.5m of transformation funding has gone to more than 25 voluntary, community, faith organisations and social enterprises, which resulted in over 5,000 additional contacts with patients during 2022-23.
- We were amongst the first areas to place dedicated mental health professionals into schools to offer direct help. Mental health support teams promote early detection and prevention of emotional health and wellbeing problems across the whole school. During 2022-2023 over 4,000 children and young people were supported by our support teams.
Raj Jain, Chair of NHS Cheshire and Merseyside, said: “It’s been a busy first year for NHS Cheshire and Merseyside and the wider NHS. I’m proud of the early progress we’ve made as we work towards our vision of working together so everyone in Cheshire and Merseyside has a great start in life and receives the support they need to stay healthy and live longer and we look forward to continuing working alongside our partners to further improve the services for our residents.
“It is great to be able celebrate with our staff in the same week as the NHS turns 75 and we will be doing that with Big Tea events in all of our offices across the week. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our staff and partners past and present for their commitment to Cheshire and Merseyside’s residents.”
Graham Urwin, Chief Executive of NHS Cheshire and Merseyside, said: “1 July 2022 provided us with an opportunity to get things right; to work together to make a real difference.
“I’m proud of the difference that has been made so far but I know there is still much to do. In the years ahead, I pledge that we’ll continue to work with as much enthusiasm, energy and passion as we have in our first year for the people of Cheshire of Merseyside.”
You can find out more about the difference being made across Cheshire and Merseyside as well as plans for the future on the NHS Cheshire and Merseyside website.
To mark the NHS 75th anniversary, buildings, historic monuments and other high profile sites across the country are lighting up blue on the evening of 5 July.
NHS staff and volunteers, as well as local communities are also being encouraged to ‘parkrun for the NHS ’at parkrun events on Saturday 8 July or junior parkrun events on Sunday 9 July.
You can find out more about NHS 75 on the NHS website.
In the build up to the first anniversary of NHS Cheshire and Merseyside and NHS 75, Cheshire and Merseyside staff have been explaining what the National Health Service means to them. You can read our staff profiles by following @NHSCandM on Twitter.
