Community services must be put at the forefront of patient care

The Community Network has said that the new NHS ten year plan must break from previous initiatives and place community services at the front and centre of improving care for the public.

Established by the NHS Confederation and NHS Providers, the Community Network states that key priorities of the upcoming plan must include the acceleration of integrated care and the spread of a community based model to manage population health and care.

Matthew Winn, chair of the Community Network, has written to NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens and NHS Improvement chief executive Ian Dalton to urge to the 10 year plan to accelerate changes to how people access health and care services and offer more integrated care, referring to recent IFS research which suggested that it is likely we will need to double acute hospital provision over the next 15 years to meet growing demand if there’s not more care in the community and closer to people’s homes.

Winn said: “Ultimately we need to do something different. The letter calls on NHS Improvement and NHS England to develop the detail underpinning a model for community health services, and a strategy for its spread across the country through sustainability and transformation partnerships and integrated care systems. The community-based approach adopted by a number of vanguard projects and wider integration projects across the country has proven to be successful. As the NAO has reported, these models achieved a slower growth rate of hospital emergency admissions.”