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Helping the NHS Achieve its Long Term Plan

The NHS Long Term Plan was published in 2019. It has since been superseded by the 10 Year Health Plan for England, “Fit for the Future”, published in July 2025. This page sets out how we support the current plan, and it is kept at this address because that is where people have linked to it.

The 10 Year Health Plan is built around three shifts:

  1. Hospital to community. More care delivered closer to home, through neighbourhood health services, virtual wards and Hospital at Home, with acute beds reserved for people who genuinely need them.
  2. Analogue to digital. A single patient record, better use of the NHS App, and technology that removes administrative burden from clinical staff rather than adding to it.
  3. Sickness to prevention. Acting earlier on the causes of ill health rather than treating the consequences, and reducing avoidable harm inside the system as well as outside it.

Much of what we do sits inside the first and third shifts. Equipment that speeds up a safe discharge moves care out of hospital. Seating that keeps patients out of bed prevents avoidable harm during the stay. NHS England’s Model discharge pathway, published in July 2026, makes that second point explicitly: it names deconditioning as a well-evidenced harm of staying in hospital longer than necessary, and asks that reviews from admission focus on preventing it. We have published a full clinical resource on that, at deconditioning in hospital.

The sections below set out where we contribute, with the honest caveat that supplying equipment is one small input into a very large system.

Hospital to community: moving care closer to home

Outdated and segmented care delivery imposes constraints on NHS services, and reforms are needed to join up patient care in the community.

Boosting out-of-hospital care, speeding up hospital discharges and reducing avoidable admissions are some of the reforms demonstrating real change.

NHS Long Term Plan

Vivid Care are assisting in boosting out-of-hospital care by:

  • Providing beds and specialist seating to virtual wards.
  • Supporting community care by supplying equipment packages to care homes, such as to the North East Lincolnshire Authority, funded by the Workforce Retention Fund.

Speeding up hospital discharge by:

  • Partnering with local authorities and Integrated Care Systems to speed up hospital discharges and relieve pressure on hospital beds. Our work with Derbyshire NHS Foundation Trust enabled bariatric patients to rehabilitate quicker with enhanced features in our Lento Bariatric chairs, and prevent medical deconditioning.
  • Speeding up physiotherapy treatments with the StairTrainer.

Reducing pressure on A&E by:

  • Supplying beds and specialist seating to new Urgent Treatment Centres (UTCs) in the community.
  • Facilitating ‘same day emergency care’ with patient transit chairs such as the Quickcare Pro chair.

Reducing avoidable admissions by:

  • Providing seating with digital technology to enable treatment at home.

Prevention, sustainability and long-term health risks

In recognition of the wider responsibility Public Health has to encourage healthy lifestyle choices, the NHS has commissioned several initiatives to curb endemic issues such as smoking, obesity, alcoholism, diabetes, and air pollution.

Sustainability Plan - Net Zero Carbon

Our detailed sustainability plan articulates our vision to become carbon-neutral by 2045, and how we will deliver this mission:

  • Reduce, reuse, recycle
  • Sourcing renewable energy supplies
  • Bulk purchase from domestic suppliers to reduce transport miles
  • Made In Britain certification
  • Switch company fleet to electric and hybrid vehicles
  • Utilise video-conferencing for product demos wherever possible to reduce our CO2 impact

Improving care quality and measurable outcomes

Despite considerable advancements over the past decade, there is still further to go in reducing healthcare inequalities and tackling the biggest causes of early morbidity in our country.

This is how we are helping the public healthcare system with some of these issues:

Advancing cancer detection and treatment:

  • Improving process flow for mammography wards with assistive seating, to manage increasing volumes due to the NHS’s campaign encouraging more people to come forward for screening
  • Providing access to Assistive seating for chemotherapy patients and other infusion treatments, maximising comfort, pressure relief, and tech-friendly accessories.

Improving stroke care:

  • Stroke is the 4th biggest cause of premature death in the UK – Vivid Care provide seating designed for stroke care wards, such as our Lento Care Chairs and Lento Riser Recliners that help patients to rehabilitate faster, with extra features to support them as they undergo treatment.  We have also launched a chair specifically for the care of patients with neurological conditions, including those affected by a stroke – the Lento Neuro is a comfortable and “cocooning” seating solution, providing unmatched comfort, adjustability, and stability.
  • Out-of-hospital provision for stroke patients needs improving, and our community seating range has all the features required for good stroke care.

Redesigning other health services for children and young people:

  • Making sure families get better care is reflected in our equipment range that covers all age groups.
  • We have our own paediatric range including the Little Lento, to improve critical care provision for children.

Better community care:

  • Providing better community care equipment is key to helping people stay in their homes and not in hospital
  • The NHS are driving research & development to improve future health outcomes, which we are supporting with the Healthcare Pioneers Board, a new panel of healthcare experts that has come together to foster new innovations and ideas.

Supporting NHS staff

The NHS is Europe’s largest employer, and staff are feeling the strain from labour shortages and increasing demand on many fronts. Recent demands for pay increases reflect this dissatisfaction.

We are helping to relieve workforce pressures through the following initiatives:

Helping the NHS achieve its Long Term Plan

Workforce education and training:

  • The NHS plans to increase investment in CPD (Continuing Professional Development) over the next 5 years. Our CPD training programme supplements professional learning for NHS staff.
  • Our additional resources such as webinars and blog articles help clinicians keep abreast of the latest healthcare developments

Improving staff welfare and efficiencies:

  • As reported by the ‘Smarter Workforce Practices’ survey, 42% of respondents had not implemented new working practices to gain efficiencies.
  • Treatment-specific seating such as mammography and X-ray chairs have been designed to improve operating efficiencies, and prevent staff musculo-skeletal disorders, with their ergonomic design.

Enabling single-handed care and flexible rostering:

  • Our standardised seating caters for a more flexible workforce with simpler configurations and less training required.
  • Our products promote single-handed care and reduced physical workload.

Analogue to digital: technology and digitally enabled care

Technology is a key driver in the transition to a more streamlined and efficient NHS. We are continuing to research and employ new technologies to advance patient care.

  • We have worked through development of a patient portal for Great Ormond Street Hospital, to personalise patient treatment plans.

Read on to find out more about our Healthcare Pioneers Board as well, our panel of Healthcare experts who have come together with the mission to innovate and influence within the industry.  This includes the upgrading of technologies and digitally enabled care.

 

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Getting more from every pound of taxpayer investment

Funding settlements have to stretch to cover a growing and ageing population, and there is still significant scope for efficiencies in the system.

Driving efficiencies and productivity:

  • The NHS will continue to drive financial efficiencies by eliminating waste, duplication and bureaucracy.  Procurement departments have also recognised that savings can be made by standardising specifications.
  • Our standardised seating range reduces waste, as parts are modular and can be swapped between chairs
  • 82% of doctors agree that joining up primary and secondary care services will reduce waste

Cutting expenditure and driving down unit costs:

  • Overstretched ambulance services can be relieved with domiciliary falls solutions such as HipGuard.
  • Our rehabilitation seating, proven to speed up hospital discharge and reduce bed blocking, frees up bed spaces to create a financial and hospital capacity ‘dividend’.
  • Improving accuracy and turnaround times on scans with our radiography seating makes the best use of the expanding workforce and reduces unit costs.

Next steps

The transition to the Integrated Care System (ICS) model introduces a purpose-built system that can drive change and collaboration across the healthcare spectrum.

  • National bodies coordinate the overall delivery strategy, and Integrated Care Boards lead planning and commissioning locally.
  • We have worked with national NHS bodies on projects of national importance like the Nightingale Hospitals Programme.

Have you seen a copy of the NHS Long Term Plan?  It is available to view here: NHS Long Term Plan

Seating Standardisation in the NHS

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