RCP President Professor Jane Dacre comments on today’s National Audit Office (NAO) report underlining the lack of progress in health and social care integration.
‘The lack of progress identified by the NAO in implementing integration between health and social care is disappointing but not surprising. There are areas of good practice in front line led projects like the RCP’s Future Hospital Programme, and where local authorities and NHS organisations have worked well together, but the imperatives over financial targets have acted as a barrier to transformation. As we said in our recent report Underfunded, Underdoctored, Overstretched, the severe pressures on emergency and acute care are felt throughout hospitals who are only just coping. This background results in double jeopardy - not having enough staff and resources to introduce new parallel services to see if they can really work in integrating health and social care, improving patient experience and producing efficiency savings - and the danger of any potential investment being siphoned off to meet the acute care crisis. Clinicians are working above and beyond the call of duty to continue safe services and transform under very difficult circumstances.’
‘However, we should not take the slow progress so far as a signal to stop or reorganise the initiatives – it takes time to transform services and evaluate them to show benefit, so they should be allowed to continue, but with much more involvement from local authorities upfront in planning and implementation, and a funding boost for social care. Although financial savings are a key part of the drive to integration, care should be delivered in the right place for the patient and patient experience must be another important measure.’