How to personalise social and health care by integrating services

There's nothing new about the aspiration of integrated health and social care services. But with hopes fading of any early implementation of the Dilnot commission's plan for reform of social care funding, the focus is shifting to integration as the means not only to deliver better, more personalised care to people, but also to make better use of resources already in the system.

The integration drum is being banged loudest, and with most effect, by Stephen Dorrell, chair of the Commons health select committee and a former Conservative health secretary. While the present holder of that post, Andrew Lansley, remains preoccupied with his controversial English NHS reforms – social care accounted for just 27 words in his 1,900-word address to the recent Tory conference – Dorrell is on an altogether different trajectory. The real policy challenge, he says, is to understand that it is only through integration of services that the needs of the 15 million people living with long-term health conditions can be met.

Full Article on Guardian Society