NHS ‘Integrated Care’: from buzzword to reality?
pharmafile | August 8, 2008 | News story | |Â Â Â
Primary care professionals have urged the government to fulfil its promise of a new commissioner-led health service, and call for its support in creating new 'integrated care organisations'.
Lord Darzi's Next Stage Review contained mention of the Integrated Care Organisations (ICOs), but the new concept didn't emerge in the media as one of the key new ideas.
But the NHS Alliance, the group of clinicians and primary care managers who invented the concept, wants to ensure the idea is transformed into reality.
Integrated Care Organisations will work alongside existing secondary and primary care trusts and the government is set to invite bids from potential NHS or private providers to run new pilot schemes across the country.
Integrated healthcare encourages close networks between primary and secondary care to ease patient care pathways. It has been defined as "the commissioning and provision of a co-ordinated continuum of services" to a population with accountability for both the clinical and financial outcomes residing in one organisation.
Details about ICOs remain scarce, but it is thought that England's most successful primary based commissioning clusters may be among the groups invited to try out the new model.
Primary Care Trusts are expected to retain control over funds in a local area, and thus they would also be charged with monitoring the performance of ICOs.
Despite the uncertainty around the plans, the NHS Alliance is excited about their development. Dr Michael Dixon, chairman of the Alliance, said: "This is what the NHS should be about. Providing seamless, patient centred care within a defined budget, with measurable clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction."
The NHS Alliance has demonstrated a growing influence on the government, which peaked earlier this year when its proposals heavily influenced the Darzi review.
The NHS Alliance is pleased the plans have been taken up by government, but is concerned that ministers have misunderstood the main priority for Integrated Care Organisations. It says the Department of Health sees them as a cost-saving measure, but the Alliance maintains their principal aim is to provide more effective services and improved patient experience.
A recent academic research paper entitled 'Altogether now? Policy options for integrating care' was published by the Health Services Management Centre at the University of Birmingham. It explored different integrated healthcare models developed around the world, but warned that some experience showed reform could actually increase fragmentation rather than integration if not implemented with consideration.
