Sexual health networks: linking providers for improvement

Endometriosis-associated dyspareunia/A better way of working Why was change needed?The National Health Service (NHS) is changing.New management structures and financial pressures have put sexual health services at risk.Commissioners are as dismayed as service users by the numerous providers in the world of sexual health and find effective planning in this context difficult.Services that work together are stronger and speak louder to commissioners. How is the new service different?A network is a set of autonomous organisations that come together to reach goals that no one organisation can reach separately.They may collaborate within a formal structure with clear lines of accountability or an informal one based on close working relationships.Many areas have already set up sexual health networks in response to specific local situations.Some focus on genitourinary medicine (GUM) and HIV while others focus on sexual and reproductive health services, health promotion or the teenage pregnancy strategy.The Lambeth and Southwark Sexual Health Network (LASSHNET) is one example of a sexual health network working to link service providers and help them speak to commissioners. How is the new service organised?LASSHNET emerged from the work of the Lambeth and Southwark Sexual Health Modernisation Programme.LASSHNET is a very broad organisation with clinicians and senior managers from sexual and reproductive health care, GUM, health promotion, public health, voluntary sector organisations, community pharmacy, general practice and commissioning.It has a full-time network development manager and 1 day per week each from two clinical leads.The work of the Modernisation Programme that LASSHNET is now taking on includes demand and capacity mapping, waiting and transit times monitoring and a mystery shopper programme.The programme has generated new roles for community pharmacy and a new model of sexual health service provision.