‘Collaboration - the only game in town’

The Covid-19 pandemic has been with us now for more than two years and it has been a constantly changing picture over that time. In the year ahead, our focus must be and is on moving beyond the pandemic and workforce is a top NHS priority. This is absolutely as it should be, the NHS is nothing without its people. 

I hope that you will agree, HEE has shown it is an agile organisation – you only need look at our work during the pandemic, where we launched free COVID-19 e-learning which has been used nearly 4.5 million times globally, or the work we led on supporting c. 40,000 learners to play key roles including nursing, midwifery, allied health profession (AHP) students and medical student volunteers. 

We are proud of the measurable improvements HEE has made in recent years in raising staffing levels, improving skills mix and creating innovative new roles, by building stronger and productive partnerships and collaborations across the health and care system. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all our partners for your support and commitment to our current and future health and care workforce.

The Health and Care Bill has now received Royal Assent, becoming the Health and Care Act 2022. This is the biggest legislative reform to the NHS in a decade. If there is one thing, I can be sure that 2022-2023 will bring, it’s more partnership and collaborative working.

As work progresses to bring together NHS England and Improvement, NHS Digital and HEE into a new organisation by April 2023, I am confident that this closer working offers a good opportunity to drive positive change through aligning our people, services, finances, plans and responsibilities to better support Integrated Care Systems (ICS).

Alongside this, the Framework for Health and Social Care Workforce Planning, which HEE has been commissioned to develop will help ensure we have a workforce with the right numbers, skills, values, and behaviours to deliver world leading services and high standards of care to a population vastly different to the one we care for today. This will be published later this month and it will provide the framework for supporting ICS five-year strategies and for an NHS long term workforce strategy; the development of which I will be leading on behalf of NHS England over the coming months.

Locally, regionally, and nationally, collaboration is most definitely the only game in town. Join us at NHS Confed/Expo in June to hear more about the work we are doing to find a way forward, ensuring the health and care workforce is put on a sustainable footing for the future.

Best Wishes

Navina

Dr Navina Evans

Chief Executive 

Health Education England