Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Wigan Council and NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board (NHS GM ICB) are working together to deliver a joint transformation programme - ‘Better Lives’.

The programme has been designed to make a rapid, meaningful and sustained improvement to the lives of residents, patients and health and care staff in Wigan.

The programme moves away from a traditional approach of increasing hospital inpatient beds and to supporting residents to remain in their own homes for longer.

There are four workstreams to support this transformation, two of which have already started (admissions avoidance and system visibility) and two of which will commence in phase 2 of the programme:

1. Admission avoidance – improving access to and capacity of community services, with decision making at the front door to increase independence
2. System visibility and active system leadership – creating one single data driven dashboard for system visibility across WWL/NHS GM ICB/Wigan Council to drive forward active system leadership
3. Acute flow and length of stay – improving hospital flow through treatment and diagnostic progression, and optimising ward processes and ways of working
4. One Wigan Community Model – defining and creating a community model to support care in the right settings, increasing independence

The programme will allow us to develop models of care which will bring social and health care together.