Our submission to the Government's Mandate to NHS England 2017-18

In December 2015, the Department of Health published its mandate to NHS England setting out the Government’s strategic ambitions for the health service for the next five years.

As part of this, the Mandate outlines a number of key objectives for the NHS that are reviewed annually.

Part of our role is to recommend changes to health and care services that will benefit people. We are a statutory consultee on the NHS Mandate, which means the Department of Health has to ask us each year about what should be included.

Based on issues people have raised with the Healthwatch network, the following document outlines the areas we asked to be considered in the refreshed objectives for the NHS. These areas included improving:

• People's experience of leaving hospital

• Public involvement in changes to local services

• How the NHS learns from patient feedback