Long read
Health and wellbeing boards and integrated care systems
In the last several years there have been significant changes in how the NHS works across different services and with external partners such as local government. Richard Humphries explores how this has impacted health and wellbeing boards, and what the future holds for them.
Comments
Dress this cuts process up with the cloak of new services and new ways of treating people and give it a catchy title , STP's , promise co operation with social care so that the NHS and Social care provision works together and promise savings from this. The big hole in all this is that the politicians since 2010 have cut social care by £5.6bn and via the Nicholson challenge the NHS cut more bn's though there is debate by precisely how much.
What is not up for debate is that this government is simply not funding the NHS sufficiently for it to provide services , STP's are a way of masking this and the cuts needed to balance the books. I would not argue that the NHS needs to move forward and always be improving but STP's are not about that and just to give one small example last year CCG's in Kent were offering patients the choice of going to Calais or Le Touque in France for routine operations as there was not the capacity for them to have them in Kent , the STP plan for Kent and Medway has a cut of 300 acute beds in it , the French it seems manage to plan quite well for bed capacity. The Kings Fund does a lot of good work on the NHS but on STP's the line sounds too familiar to that emanating from NHS England
I predict STPs will proceed as ordered by the Treasury to be followed, in about 3 years time, by the 'revelation, that Social Services have not fulfilled their part of the bargain.
Disconcerted to learn that the Kings Funds is reliant on the Government for one third of its income and that two members of our CCG are paid £85,000 to £100,000 for their 'impartial' advice.
Have copied this submission to the national press
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