NHS Alliance
NHS Alliance is an English organisation, founded as a not-for-profit membership body to bring together commissioners of NHS services with health professionals across primary care. It takes its direction from its members and its national executive, guided by chairman, Dr Michael Dixon OBE and chief executive, Rick Stern. Roy Lilley, blogger and commentator, is patron of its Tomorrow's Leaders network.
Its principal activities include:
Informing and generating debate on behalf of its members through white papers, reports, seminars and conferences
Thought leadership and encouraging positive changes to the health service
Supporting progressive clinical and managerial leaders through its Tomorrow's Leaders Network
NHS Alliance represents providers of care outside hospital, and is neither a professional body nor a trade union. It encompasses a community of more than 10,000 individuals and organisations across primary care advocating that innovation, connections and integration are key to the sustainability of a health service that remains free to all at the point of need.
It represents all providers of primary care including general practice; community eye, hearing and foot care; community pharmacy; dentistry and physiotherapy; and out-of-hours and emergency services. NHS Alliance also represents determinants of health outcomes like housing organisations or those with an interest in maintaining good health such as local authorities and health and wellbeing boards.
An early exponent of clinical commissioning groups, NHS Alliance now works closely with providers and communities to identify and share the solutions needed to sustain the NHS. It also focuses on providing practical support to help drive the innovation it endorses.
NHS Alliance works with a number of strategic partners with whom it co-produces and delivers important think and action papers, reports, programmes and summits.
Two recent publications, Breaking Boundaries and Beyond: A Manifesto for Primary Care (March 2013) and Think Big, Act Now: Creating a Community of Care (October 2014) were early articulations of NHS England's Five Year Forward View, describing the requirement to dissolve silos and tensions within the system and work towards more lateral organisations, what it calls 'Communities of Care', equivalent to NHS England's Multispecialty Community Providers.
Other networks include people powered improvement, general practice, new providers, urgent care and housing.
References
Breaking Boundaries (March 2013) Think Big, Act Now: Creating a Community of Care