Publications

The Health and Care Bill will put integrated care systems (ICSs) on a statutory footing from April 2022. How can social care providers ensure they are involved as new ICS structures develop, to create partnerships that deliver better services and outcomes for local populations?

Simon Bottery and Sally Warren set out a radical but realistic vision of the future of social care, built around four principles of a good care system: availability, personalisation, quality and eligibility.

The Comprehensive Spending Review details the government’s plans for public spending over the coming years. It will clarify which areas of the health and care budget have not yet been addressed by recent funding announcements around the NHS and for social care reform. Here, we set out the challenges and consider steps the government could take to address them.

As a result of Covid-19 waiting times for NHS treatment, already an issue before the pandemic, have grown to historic highs – or have they? Richard Murray compares current waiting times to those seen in the 2000s – and asks what we can learn from the last time the NHS tackled long waits.

Public satisfaction with general practice is lower now than it has ever been, while the number of people reporting difficulties in booking appointments continues to grow. We run through the proposed solutions to issues around GP access and consider their potential effectiveness.

Commissioning is the process by which health and care services are planned, purchased and monitored. Here we look at the commissioning process in more detail, the organisations involved and how it is changing.

Siva Anandaciva takes a look at the key numbers mentioned in the Spending Round (and those that weren’t) add up, and the implications they have for health and social care.