Our key achievements in 2023/24
Clinical performance highlights
- Accident and emergency (A&E 4-hour target): 76% of people attending A&E were admitted or discharged within four hours of arrival in March, meeting the operational target set by NHS England.
- Ambulance category 2 response: Ambulances on category two emergency callouts in West Yorkshire reached the patient on average in under 28 minutes, within the 30-minute target set by NHS England.
- Urgent community services: 78% of urgent community care responses reached patients within two hours, achieving the NHS England target.
- Elective care: we ended the financial year with no-one waiting more than 104 weeks between referral and elective treatment, and fewer than 20 patients waiting longer than 78 weeks. The Elective Recovery Bulletin (April 2024) sets out just some of the highlights.
- Cancer care: The number of people waiting more than 62 days between referral and starting cancer treatment has decreased down to 476, which is lower than the national target and represents the joint lowest proportion across the country. 81% of people referred find out whether they have cancer or not within 28 days, achieving the target set by NHS England. 68% of people with confirmed cancer have started treatment within 62 days of referral, which is on track to deliver the 70% interim target by March 2025. The Cancer Alliance website shares more details about achievements across the system to benefit patients right through the cancer pathway.
- Cardiovascular disease management: West Yorkshire is the eighth fastest ICB to recover compared to the pre-COVID position for the percentage of people with diagnosed high blood pressure but with a normal blood pressure reading (<140/90 mmHg) in the last 12 months.
- Mental health services: West Yorkshire is one of only five ICBs nationally achieving at least three of the six core long term plan targets relating to mental health.
- We developed a West Yorkshire staff bank. Over 1300 people have signed up to work flexibly across our three mental health, learning disability and autism trusts, making substantial savings in agency staff costs.
- Dementia diagnosis: 69.2% across West Yorkshire (against a target of 66.7%).
- Diagnostics: 9.7% of patients are currently waiting more than six weeks for a diagnostic test. This is above the target set nationally but better than the regional average.
- We offered a wider choice of continuous glucose monitoring devices - to help improve the health of people living with diabetes.
Primary care
- 17.1m general practice appointments have taken place with an increase of 6% since last year and 103% of the local ambition to deliver 16.6m appointments over 12 months.
- Pharmacy First has 494 (96%) pharmacies now signed up.
- Cloud Based Telephony: 57 practices have been approved for funding. 19 practices are now live with their new advanced CBT supplier.
- 87% of practices have enabled the NHS App to allow people to see their medical records, order repeat prescriptions, manage routine appointments.
- 69 practices engaged in general practice improvement programme.
- There are signs of improvement since we became the commissioner of dental services. Children accessing a dentist in the last 12 months is 60.8% (up 9.9% on the previous year) and adults 48.2% (up by 5.5% on the previous year). Both access metrics compare favourable regionally and nationally.
- Performance of the dental system and contract delivery for 2023 /2024 will become clearer over the first quarter of 2024 / 25. Latest available data suggests delivery to be around 83% - an improvement on the same period in the previous year.
Commitment to community well-being
- At the end of March 2023, the ICB allocated £1million to the VCSE, and a further £1.8 million to our Hospices (also part of the VCSE) recognising the immediate challenges faced in terms of sector sustainability.
- In April 2024, we welcomed 52 Population Health Fellows bringing the number of people in West Yorkshire joining the Fellowship since 2022 to 132.
- We are providing employment opportunities through 'Project Hope' for young people leaving care.
- Hosted Neurodiversity Summits to address challenges in transforming care with neurodivergent people.
- Celebrated the vital role of the voluntary, community, and social enterprise sector in delivering health and care services.
- In January 2024 we launched the West Yorkshire Inclusion Health Unit bringing together partners across the system to improve access and health outcomes from communities including; improved dental access for homeless populations and people seeking asylum, improving our understanding of the needs of people engaged in sex work, improving access to mental health support for inclusion health groups and development of a community board to feed lived experience into service planning.
- In March 2024, we launched the West Yorkshire Tobacco Alliance which will focus on reducing smoking prevalence through rolling out ‘swap to stop initiatives’, expanding approaches to reduce illicit tobacco, working with social housing providers and piloting stop smoking services in our emergency departments. Public health leaders in West Yorkshire and Yorkshire and the Humber welcomed the introduction of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill and the potential to eradicate smoking within a generation.
- Coordinated a response to a year of industrial action and winter pressures
- Co-ordinated urgent action across winter, during industrial action and major incidents that have kept services safe and saved lives, with a successful system coordination centre.
- Developed successful campaigns and services - including ‘Together We Can’ campaign, with around 50,000 website visitors (March 2024), and targeted campaigns on MMR and measles outbreaks.
Commitment to inequality, diversity, and equity
- Embracing technology to deliver care, monitoring, and treatment in patients' homes, ensuring accessibility and inclusivity.
- Hosting Learning from Lives and Deaths (LeDeR) focus events to address challenging issues in care delivery.
- Opened up our leadership and fellowship programmes to bring greater diversity, all sector skills to significant problems with a focus on inequity.
- Successfully implemented the Bradford District and Craven Reducing Inequalities in Communities (RIC) programme, as highlighted in the comprehensive final report available for review.
- Became the first Partnership of Sanctuary in the country.
- Around 200 people joined our fourth Adversity, Trauma and Resilience Knowledge Exchange run jointly with the West Yorkshire Violence Reduction Partnership.
Other key achievements in 2023/24
- Organising a successful palliative (end of life) care conference in March 2024, providing valuable insights and discussions.
- Administering 454,994 COVID-19 vaccinations in the autumn/winter, thanks to the exceptional work of our operations and communications colleagues.
- Conducting a thorough equality, diversity, and inclusion audit, reflecting our commitment to diversity and inclusion.
- Recognising the essential role of corporate affairs functions and the Partnership’s office in supporting our governance arrangements.
- Created a stronger partnership with West Yorkshire Combined Authority with ambitious shared goals on innovation, reducing violence against women and girls, the skills agenda, and being the first Creative Health System.
- Furthermore, the upcoming initiatives such as new accessibility guidance and the Accessibility Champions Training, showcasing our ongoing commitment to inclusivity and accessibility.
- We achieved a break-even financial position for the West Yorkshire NHS system. This involved managing financial pressures through non-recurrent national funding and additional flexibilities.
