Welcome to the November edition of The Triangle

Welcome to the November edition of The Triangle, our newsletter about the work of Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire (BSW) Together, our Integrated Care System (ICS).

Winter is always a challenging period for our health and care services and a great deal of work has been taking place across all of the organisations that make up BSW Together to ensure we are in the best position to face the coming months.

Our services remain under extreme pressure and covid and flu continue to have an impact both on patient numbers and staff absence. In addition to this, demand for beds and delays discharging patients continue to contribute to pressures.

We are addressing these issues through a range of measures including providing additional beds, care coordination and a focus on improving the escalation process.

We are also making sure our dedicated and hard-working staff across our partner organisations look after their own health and wellbeing during the coming winter months. We have been making them aware of the raft of services and support in place to help them and encouraging them to do all they can to support themselves and their colleagues during this busy period.

You can read more about our plans in this issue of The Triangle, including the opening of a temporary ward at St Martin’s Hospital in Bath for people who are well enough to leave our acute wards, but not quite well enough to go home.

Addressing health inequalities across our communities is a key priority for BSW Together and we are pleased to report that we have been involved in a programme to provide a number of excellent Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector groups with grants to support their essential work. You can read more about this here.

Elsewhere in this issue you can find out about a new partnership scheme in Swindon to improve the health of local people by encouraging them to be more active and watch a short film about the development of our health and care model which describes a coordinated approach to how we design and plan services across our partner organisations.

Finally, we would like to highlight the excellent work being carried out by our hard-working teams across the BSW area in providing covid and flu boosters to our local populations. These vaccinations can be lifesaving and will help you stay well this winter and avoid unnecessary visits to our under pressure services. If you are eligible, please do go and get your vaccine.

Thank you for reading. Please let us know what you think about The Triangle and about anything you’d like to see us cover in future issues by emailing bswicb.partnership@nhs.net

Sue Harriman,

Chief Executive Officer, Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Integrated Care Board

Stephanie Elsy, 

Chair, Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Integrated Care Board