Welcome to the December issue of The Triangle

2022 has certainly been a significant year for all of us here at Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Together.

We established our Integrated Care Board, Integrated Care Partnership and three Integrated Care Alliances and began better collaboration with our partners to improve health outcomes for local people. You can find out more about this by watching this short film: What is BSW Integrated Care System?

It has also been an incredibly challenging year, from the impact of covid to the ongoing pressures faced by our health and care services this winter

These are challenges that we faced together through a confident and collaborative approach that drew on the joint strengths and resources of our collective health and care system. I would like to pass on my thanks to colleagues across all of our partner organisations who have worked so hard this year and helped us to make a real difference to the lives of people living across BSW.

This joint approach has provided the foundation to a number of successful initiatives this year such as our ongoing covid and flu vaccination and booster programmes, our strategies to improve the flow of patients through our acute hospitals, our work to address health inequalities and our joint planning to deal with the ongoing pressures faced by our health and care system.

Our joint approach will also stand us in good stead as we embark on a new year and new challenges including developing our Integrated Care Partnership, creating our Integrated Care Strategy and continuing to work collaboratively with partners and members of the public on a redesign of community services in the area.

As always, you can read more about this work in this issue of The Triangle.

Thank you for reading and may we take this opportunity to wish you a happy and peaceful Christmas and healthy new year.