Region's health hubs 'already making difference'

Greater Manchester has already set up two neighbourhood health hubs

Greater Manchester has had a head-start implementing neighbourhood health services, part of the government's 10-year plan for the NHS, and it has already improved life expectancy figures, the region's health boss has said.

Sir Keir Starmer's plan to "rewire" the health service is based on moving patients out of hospitals and into neighbourhood health hubs.

NHS Greater Manchester chief executive Mark Fisher said the region had already established hubs in Hyde and Gorton.

"You can already see that these sorts of approaches... have increased life expectancy in Greater Manchester more than the average in England," he said.

Starmer announced on Wednesday that over the next decade, about 200 new neighbourhood health centres would be set up, staffed by a mix of GPs, nurses, social care workers, pharmacists, mental health specialists and other medics.

Mr Fisher said neighbourhood health services were already in place in Greater Manchester.

"This focus on prevention... the focus on moving care into neighbourhoods - you can see that they bear fruit."

'Real difference'

He said Mayor Andy Burnham's proposed "live well" centres, which would see job, benefits, health and housing services based in the same place, were also being funded by the NHS.

"I think about 19% of people who go into an appointment with a GP in Greater Manchester do not actually have a health need, it's a debt need or they need advice on their housing," Mr Fisher told BBC Radio Manchester.

"So if you go to the Gorton hub for example... you'll get help with your debt alongside help with your housing alongside that GP appointment.

"It's seeing people addressing all their needs I think that's going to make a real difference."

Sir Keir Starmer announced the national plan on Wednesday

The planned neighbourhood health hub centres will eventually be open 12 hours a day, six days a week, the government has said.

But the Royal College of Nursing warned that moving services out of overcrowded hospitals would be impossible without policies to boost the "depleted and undervalued" nursing workforce.

A new workforce plan for the health service is expected to be announced later this year which will set targets to recruit new staff to work in community care.