Integrating Health and Social Care

Making best use of the Better Care Fund

Announced by the government in June 2013, the £3.8 billion Better Care Fund is a single pooled budget to support health and social care services to work more closely in local areas. This King’s Fund briefing presents evidence in a number of different area, such as primary prevention, self-care and case management.  

You may also be interested in:

• King’s Fund’s Integrated care: making it happen, and The quest for integrated health and social care
•  NHS Confederation’s Integrated Care –a model of service delivery across health and social care
• Monitor’s Enabling integrated care
• Right Care’s Integrated Care
• NHS improving Quality’s Pioneering integrated care and support
• Nuffield Trust’s:
• What is integrated care?
• Where next for integrated care organisations in the English NHS?
• Evaluating integrated and community-based care: how do we know what works?

Hard truths: essential actions

The Health Foundation has published a briefing on bridging the gap between the actions set out by the government in Hard Truths and their practical application by people working in the service.One of the key recommendations is that measures should be developed to assess the future risk of harm, not just the occurrence of past harm.

See also:

• The measurement and monitoring of safety
•  Patient safety resource centre: measurement and analysis
• Proactive Risk Monitoring in Healthcare

Quality and Productivity Cochrane Topics/Case Studies

NHS Evidence has published some case studies of innovative practices so that organisations can learn from one another.  Also the Cochrane Topics section has some ‘implications for practice’ to help inform local practices. There were no new additions last month.

This month’s tool: Protocol Based Care

Protocol based care enables NHS staff to address the key questions of what should be done, when, where and by whom at a local level. It provides an effective framework for working in multi-disciplinary teams.

See this tool at the NHS Institute and also at NHS Scotland Quality Improvement Hub.