NHS and local gov urged to remake partnership

Professor Keith Willett has said that health and local government leaders must seize ‘the greatest opportunity in 70 years’ to remake the NHS and local authority partnership and improve the health of their communities.

With the two sectors having struggled with their financial and operational differences, NHS England’s top urgent care doctor claimed that changing health needs and growing financial pressures means that a major shift in attitudes both needed and appropriate - envisioning ‘health and care without boundaries’.

With imminent and existing pressures risking the sectors becoming more independent, Willett pointed to positive results from joint working over the past year which has seen hospital delayed transfers of care cut to their lowest level in over three years. He also highlighted five other schemes where local authorities and the NHS had formed partnerships that had improved services in their communities.

Willett said: “Many in the NHS and social care have no idea of the complexity of the other care system yet we are interfacing with them all of the time. You can’t understand the complex needs of people until you’ve listened to a patient or carer talking to their GP or ringing 111 or 999 for a local mental health response or to sort out a care issue for an elderly person who then ends up going into hospital. The NHS traditionally presents change from an evidenced-based and population-benefit perspective, and local government often sees such change from the individual constituents’ day to day life circumstances and their holistic social need.”