South West London CCG Annual Report and Accounts 2020/21

challenges that it brought us all. Staff have delivered for the people of South West London, whilst also adapting to new ways of working and being part of an organisational change. Covid-19 in South West London: our response, the restart, how we reshape As this Annual Report explains, much of the core-business of the CCG over the past year has been responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. In February 2020, the CCG, on behalf of the South West London health and care system, established the Gold Command Incident Control Room (ICR) for the NHS in South West London. Operational seven days a week, Gold Command reported directly into NHS England, to support our NHS leaders to manage the incident in their own organisations, and across our wider health and care system. The strength of our response in South West London last year was rooted in how we came together across organisational boundaries and clinical networks, to work with our communities to keep the most vulnerable protected, shielded and supported. The most extraordinary year the NHS has ever faced has also made us more innovative as well as more collaborative. There are many examples in this report of how colleagues have rapidly adapted to ensure services continued to meet changing patient needs: such as keeping patients safe and monitored in their own homes rather than in hospitals; transforming GP, outpatient and mental health services to increase virtual access when face-to-face treatment was very restricted; NHS Trusts working closely together to support a huge increase in patient numbers; and great examples of collaboration with our social care colleagues, care home partners and voluntary sector. As we moved into managing the recovery of services following the first wave of the pandemic, we changed the way we delivered health and care services so we could continue to protect and care for local people, and ensure we were prepared for the second wave in the winter. Our CCG leaders, as members of the South West London Recovery Board, led this work, and we were clear that the recovery should be focussed on primary care, mental health and community services as well as the acute sector. Our clinical priorities during the recovery period were particularly concerned with those groups of patients who had not been seeking health advice and support during the first wave and understanding why Covid-19 had disproportionately affected people from ethnic minority groups and those from more deprived areas. We developed 15 elective recovery clinical networks, each led jointly by The strength of our response in South West London last year was rooted in how we came together across organisational boundaries Annual Report and Accounts 2020/21 | 7