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Thérèse Coffey to boost advanced nurse practitioner roles in new NHS plan and sets up £500m fund to discharge medically fit NHS patients

Posted on September 2022 By Aaliyah Borgia

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Health secretary Thérèse Coffey encouraged the boost of advanced nurse practitioner roles in the new NHS plan as well as set up a £500m fund to discharge medically fit NHS patients. Thérèse announced during her speech that her aim is to free up beds throughout hospitals across England before winter pressures.

Thérèse Coffey has announced that the Government will free up funds for GPs to employ more advanced nurse practitioners and boost the recruitment of international healthcare workers. She expressed that in order to meet these targets her plan promises to free up funding to “widen the types of staff that work, in general, practises including encouraging GPs to hire more advanced nurse practitioners”

Additionally, she strives to ensure she tackles the growing crisis in the health service, especially patients’ long delays in care. The new Adult Social Care Discharge fund ensures patients whom doctors have judged confidently enough to leave can be safely discharged either into a care home or their home.

It is evident that more than 13,000 of the 100,000 NHS hospital beds accommodate delayed discharge. This results in A&E becoming extremely hectic and long delays in ambulance handovers.

The £500m fund will extend to care home providers and operators of domiciliary care services, which predominantly helps the elderly who live at home with tasks that they may struggle with such as dressing, eating and getting out of bed.

These plans also set out to encourage the improvement of the amount of access to general practice appointments. The expectation is that all patients who are in need of an appointment should get one within a two-week period and the patients who need urgent care should be seen within the same day.

Support staff, new telephone systems and pharmacists will also be expected to change NHS pension rules to retain more experienced NHS clinicians and remove the restrictions on staff returning from retirement resulting in the increased capacity for appointments and other services.

Alongside, the government’s plan to ensure patients get the best possible care, the Health and Social Care Secretary called for a “national endeavour” to continue to support the NHS. This includes encouraging people across England to volunteer for roles throughout the Health Service and investigating methods on how to strengthen how we use our volunteers such as supporting the NHS ambulances in areas of greatest need.

Prime Minister Liz Truss said, “On the steps of Downing Street this month, I pledged that one of my earliest priorities as Prime Minister would be to put our health and care system on a firm footing.” The plan sets out to ensure they continue encouraging outstanding care for patients in each of her A, B, C and D priority areas such as – ambulance, care and dentists and doctors.