​Letter confirms funding support for capacity drive

A letter from NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard (pictured) and NHS Improvement chief executive Stephen Powis on preparing for the potential impact of the Omicron variant and other winter pressures has been issued. It declared a level 4 national incident in the NHS, and outlined six action areas for the NHS.

At the association's conference last week, Mr Kelly’s focus was on the third action area outlined in the letter – maximising capacity to ensure patients are discharged safely and quickly, and to support people in their own homes. This could be achieved using hotel beds, virtual wards and hospital at home schemes, for example. He ‘gave licence’ for finance directors to take sensible measures to free up hospital beds for the winter, even if this would have enduring costs.

The letter said systems have access to funding through core allocations, Covid-19 funding and the Hospital Discharge Programme. It added: ‘Where systems can show further funding is necessary in addition to existing budgets then, to facilitate this drive, NHS England will fund additional costs incurred. Commissioners and providers should notify regional teams of the estimated additional cost and bed benefit as plans are firmed up, and claim the actual cost through the existing quarterly claims process.’

Capacity must be increased next year the letter added, and the national bodies are planning to ring-fence national funding to support virtual wards, including hospital at home schemes.

The letter continues: ‘Therefore, where steps taken now on virtual wards can have an enduring benefit to overall capacity and have recurrent costs those should be notified at the same time so that we can allow for them on top of core system allocations for 2022/23.’

To support this and boost capacity, the government has announced a further £300m for domiciliary care workers, on top of the existing £162m workforce scheme. A new national discharge taskforce has also been established.

The action areas announced in the letter also include a focus on expanding the Covid vaccination drive, maximising the availability of Covid treatments for vulnerable patients, and supporting staff to maximise their availability.