Sharing expertise across the region

Our musculoskeletal (MSK) services are an excellent example of bringing services together. Our MSK services now work under shared leadership and governance structures. The services will remain distinct in how they serve their local communities.

Merging leadership and governance offers several benefits to patients, staff and communities. These benefits include:

• More opportunities for collaboration.
• Sharing common challenges, learning and improvements across the region.
• Greater collective oversight.

We have established an MSK clinical advisory group. The new advisory group is a dedicated forum for clinicians, service representatives and partnership colleagues from East Coast Community Healthcare. It provides an opportunity for:

• clinical development
• sharing best practice and evidence
• discussing emerging clinical issues
• supporting greater consistency in clinical standards and approaches across the services

These arrangements strengthen our professional networks. They enable colleagues to learn from each other, test approaches and use a wider range of clinical and operational expertise. We now have a stronger mechanism for adapting and spreading learning. It ensures that useful improvements and innovations can be used across the services.

For patients, this will improve consistency in care. A wider network of expertise supports their local services. This means that best practices, improvements and innovation can spread faster.

This is not about creating a single uniform service. Each MSK service will continue responding to local healthcare and community needs. The services can use the collective knowledge, experience and expertise from across the wider Trust and partners.