Inquiry into integrated care

On 11 June 2018, the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee published its report Integrated care: organisations, partnerships and systems.

The report included 42 conclusions and recommendations, and responses to each of these are included in the Governments response. 

The Committee launched this inquiry to examine the development of the new integrated ways of planning and delivering local health and care services which have arisen out of the NHS Five Year Forward View.

Integrated care is centred around a person’s needs; proactive in supporting wellbeing and identifying risks of health deteriorating; and coordinated so that it feels like it’s provided by one service, even if it isn’t. It should improve health and wellbeing for the population, enhance the quality of care from providers, and improve financial sustainability. Integrated care also involves a greater focus on population health.

This will need the NHS, local authorities and the third sector to work together to enable the development of new models of care that focus on populations and their needs and, prevent ill health and unnecessary hospitalisation.

In some areas, commissioners are looking to strengthen integration by bringing together a range of health and care services under a single contract, with the provider of those services becoming an ‘Integrated Care Provider’ (or ‘ICP’ – previously referred to as an ‘accountable care organisation’) that is responsible for both quality of care and health outcomes for a defined population.

To support the NHS to deliver for patients across the country, the Government has announced a new five-year budget settlement for the NHS, which will see funding grow on average by 3.4% each year to 2023/24. This will mean the NHS budget will increase by over £20 billion compared with today. This additional funding will underpin a ten-year plan to guarantee the future of the NHS for the long term.