NHS South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board Sheffield Place Walk In Centre Broad Street Sheffield

NHS South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) (formerly Sheffield Clinical Commissioning Group) undertook a review of Urgent Care services in the city in 2019. The main aim of the review was to do ‘what’s right for Sheffield’ and to understand the root causes of the problems identified in previous engagements. A total of 2,587 people contributed to this review using various approached using online questionnaires, workshops, interviews and group discussions.<br/><br/>Following the extensive engagement with public and staff in that review, four root causes of all the challenges faced by patients and staff were identified and agreed in the engagement and agreed by Sheffield partners, these are: <br/><br/>• Confusing and inconsistent pathways. <br/>• Inconsistent knowledge and lack of knowledge <br/>• Differences with culture, behaviour, environment/health inequalities. <br/>• Ineffective use of resources and lack of resources<br/><br/>The proposal, co-developed in the engagement with public and staff was that the best way to address these root causes was to improve current services (evolution) and not radically procure/reconfigure services (revolution), especially given the Long-Term Plan’s intentions to develop GP practice workforce and the development of Primary Care Networks. <br/>Work to improve services, as determined by the Urgent Care Review, was adversely impacted by the Covid-19 Pandemic and the service review which was planned for March- September 2021 has not taken place. In addition, COVID-19 has brought unprecedented changes to how the people of Sheffield have accessed urgent care services and the root causes we had been addressing since 2019 may also have changed. Therefore, locally we will need to understand all these changes to inform the future service requirements. We will also need to understand the risks associated with changes to Extended Access arrangements in October 2022 which are yet unknown and unquantifiable but likely to impact on the whole urgent care system. It would not be in the public’s best interests to procure a model that may no longer be right for the local population. Nor would it be in the public’s best interests to de-commission a service that currently provides approximately 60,000 appointments per year to the people of Sheffield without some alternative. <br/><br/>Sheffield Health Care Partnership made a public commitment to review the impact of any changes implemented following the Urgent Care Review, prior to making any further significant changes to the Urgent Care System. As this has not yet been fulfilled, South Yorkshire ICB recognises that it is necessary to further extend the Walk-In Centre (WIC) contract by 18 months to 30th September 2024 in order to undertake a further review. The WIC requires the continuation of the WIC service in its current form. <br/><br/>COVID19 and changes to NHS finance and contracting guidance has led to the agreement of an Aligned Incentive Payment contract between NHS South Yorkshire ICB and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which does not include a specifically agreed amount for the Walk-In Centre. We have therefore estimated the value of the Walk-In Centre within the overall contract value using the 2019/20 agreed Walk-In Centre contract value, adjusted in the same way (for inflation etc) as the overall contract value was in 20/21, 21/22 and 22/23. Doing so gives an estimated 22/23 annual value of £3,154,655. The equivalent for the 18 months 01/04/22 to 30/09/24 would be £4,731,983, excluding any uplifts that might be applied to the period 01/04/24 to 30/09/24 as and when 23/24 contract discussions are concluded.