University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust are welcoming the new NHS 10 Year Health Plan as set out by the government.

Chief Executive Mark Hackett said:

“We would like to thank all those people – our staff, volunteers, patients, carers and the public – who engaged with us around the shaping of the national plan.

We worked with partners across Devon and heard many moving, personal experiences, interesting insights, people’s hopes and fears for the NHS and we gathered and fed all these in to help form this national plan.

“We are also using that insight to help us shape local plans for the future.

“We welcome the plan, its three shifts - from hospital to community; from analogue to digital and from sickness to prevention - and the move to more neighbourhood health services.

“At University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, we are ahead of the game in working with other healthcare providers to move services from our main specialist hospital to the community and in our work as an anchor institution to support people in leading healthy lives, from having meaningful jobs to supporting our staff, students and volunteers to work with communities to improve health and education.

“This plan signals the future direction for the NHS and we will review more of the detail contained in it over the coming days.

But we are hopeful because of the great work our staff are already doing to shape services for the future in line with this.

“Our staff are highly skilled and innovative and they are already creating services that meet the needs of people today. “

An example is the award-winning X-ray car service which provides diagnostics for people who have fallen in their own home.

The car comes complete with a full X-Ray kit and is staffed by specialist Radiographers and Imaging Healthcare Assistants.

They cover Plymouth and the surrounding areas including parts of the South Hams.