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Build your own Accountable Care System

The NHS has teamed up to Lego to create the most absorbing and challenging construction set ever. The Lego Accountable Care System promises to keep you and your family occupied well into the New Year 2023 and beyond.

Watch their faces light up this Christmas morning as they eagerly tear off the hundreds of layers of wrapping paper, appoint a team of lawyers and set to work.

The Lego ACS replaces previously available activity based play systems with a revolutionary outcomes-based collaborative approach to construction.

Gone are such old-fashioned concepts as instructions and pieces that fit together. No more boring old picture on the box telling you what your model should look like. Instead, you and your family are invited to use your imagination and skill to create the care system you can afford, not the one you think you deserve.

Inside the box are:

  • High-level plans for a care-like system
  • Examples of overseas models you might want to try
  • A limited number of pieces or “available resources”
  • Unlimited Lego Patient figurines – we’ll keep sending these even if you beg us to stop!  
  • Draft construction rules (subject to change) – you don’t have to follow them, but you may void your warranty if you don’t.

Each kit comes with just enough pieces to build a hospital, GP surgery, clinic or care home, but what are you going to do with all the patients left over? Get together with friends and neighbours to integrate your individual Lego care siloes to make a full-blown ACS.

Fun for all the family

Here’s how it works. Arrange a meeting between all Lego stakeholders in your street. One of you will need to be the leader. If you can’t agree who it should be, the boss will be the person with the biggest Lego Hospital. Try to include everyone – even if all they have is a Lego Social Care kit or the entry-level Lego Mental Health Trust (both discontinued). If you still can’t decide, ask a parent or NHS England official to choose a leader. 

You will all need to work together to build your ACS. If you are missing pieces for your part of the system, perhaps someone else has some they don’t need. To stop the whole thing falling over, make sure you start with a strong base using the Lego Support Chassis (available separately).

Now more unrealistic than ever!

Once you have your built your basic structure and filled it with patients, you will need to add figurines from the extensive range of Lego Healthcare Professionals. Don’t worry if you don’t have enough – just keep moving them around and tell them to work harder!

Choose from Lego GP with unbreakable contract (comes with lifetime guarantee), protesting Lego Junior Doctor with Save Our NHS and range of Down With placards, Lego Nurse (compatible with Lego Foodbank set) and Lego Social Worker with authentic haunted look and beard.

Note that due to demand, stocks of some figures may be limited until 2028. If you don’t have enough clinicians to look after all your patients, just add a Lego Plausible Health Secretary. For added realism, get the Lego Credible Workforce Plan (coming soon) and hold a press conference to announce it to your friends.

Optional extras

There are lots of extras to make your ACS even more fun. Choose from:  

  • The Lego Winter Pressures Option Pack – stops cracks developing into serious structural problems in cold weather
  • The Universal Clinician Assistant (new!) – a flexible figurine able to do everything a GP, junior doctor or nurse can do but at a fraction of the cost
  • The Lego Change Agent – available in a range of clip-on hairstyles and vacuous expressions (part of the Lego Horizons space travel range)
  • The Lego CQC Inspector – comes in sets of 20, includes spare clipboards – compatible with Lego Holiday Inn Express
  • The A&E Expansion Kit – includes extra trolleys and tents for the car park just in case you run out of ambulances for storing your spare patients.

Parental warning: Not suitable for anyone. Contains unlikely parts.

Construction editor: Julian Patterson 

@jtweeterson
julian.patterson@networks.nhs.uk

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