Having worked hard to influence health minister Professor Lord Darzi's wide-ranging review of the NHS (the NHS Next Stage Review), our top priority for the immediate period is to ensure its implementation delivers real and sustainable benefits for patients, the public and NHS staff.

Other priorities for 2008/09 include:

Reputation work

In response to a survey of our members and discussions at membership meetings, we will focus on supporting members with their local reputation while continuing to address national reputation issues through our media and political work.

Future challenges for the NHS

2008 is the 60th anniversary of the NHS. Therefore, the theme of our annual conference is Delivering the future today to create a debate on some of the major future challenges facing the NHS. In the run up to the conference we are producing a series of debate papers on funding social care, compassion, globalisation and expectations, innovation and top ups.

Influencing the health debate in the lead up to the next general election

We will be working with all parties to ensure that their proposed policies on health are sensible, workable and in the best interests of patients, the public and staff, and producing our own manifesto.

System management

We will be developing our position on the key issues and helping our members to make sense of the new proposals.

Health inequalities

We will continue work with our members to influence the Government's health inequalities strategy. We will also provide a briefing to help our members make sense of the findings from the work of the national support team with spearhead authorities.

Integrated care

We are developing work on opportunities for vertical integration, starting with a seminar with the Department of Health.

Patient experience and dignity

We will build on the arguments in our debate paper on compassion, taking this work forward working in partnership with key organisations such as the Royal College of Nursing.

Registration and regulation, and the burden of bureaucracy

We will continue to influence the future regulatory and registration regime to be operated by the Care Quality Commission, as well as the process of setting improvements standards.

Informatics

We are identifying member views and responding to the informatics review.

Quality, safety and complaints

We will continue to work with the range of national organisations involved in this agenda to shape their work and ensure members have a voice. For example, we are working with the Department of Health on a briefing for boards on their responsibilities around healthcare associated infection. We will continue to work with the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) to develop the National Learning and Reporting System (NLRS) and promote shared learning.

Capital regime

Our work on this will focus on exploring the contributions of planning versus markets for the allocation of capital into the system.

Green paper on social care

We will be working to ensure that solutions for funding social care do not adversely impact on our members and that any change will facilitate joint-working and the integration of services.

New knowledge products for members

We are developing new services to give members the latest intelligence, policy and political insight and make sense of the health policy and political agenda.