People from across the country are set to benefit from a new scheme to improve patient care and enhance the resilience of NHS services – the Provider Collaborative Innovators scheme.  

Following a call for expressions of interest, which attracted 46 applications, NHS England has chosen nine collaboratives to provide bespoke support to this year.  

The North East London (NEL) Mental Health Learning Disability and Autism Provider Collaborative has been named in the first group of partnerships for the scheme.   

Through the programme NHS England will work alongside NEL, agreeing a bespoke support package that will accelerate delivery of existing ambitions.   

They will be delivering improvements for patients and communities across a wide range of areas, including:   

• shortening waiting times   
• integrating care pathways from GPs through to specialist care   
• developing new models of care for children’s services   
• removing variation and duplication in community care   
• transforming child and adolescent mental health services   
• tackling health inequalities between different groups of people.   

Provider collaboratives are partnerships of organisations delivering improvements for patients and communities.    

East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT), North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT) and North East London Health and Care Partnership (NEL HCP) are NEL Mental Health Learning Disability and Autism Provider Collaborative partners.   

Jacqui Van Rossum, NELFT acting chief executive, said: 

“Working together with other providers on this innovative programme, will not only allow us to deliver our ambitious targets faster, but it will also enable us to provide better care to all our patients.” 

The scheme aims to enable provider collaboratives to share innovation and troubleshoot issues with each other.    

Areas of support are likely to include service transformation expertise, governance and legal support and data analytics.   

Paul Calaminus, Chief Executive of ELFT, said:

“The innovator programme will help further improve patient care and enhance the resilience of NHS services,

It is good news for the provider collaborative and it is good news for the communities we serve.”