Integrating care successfully will heighten NHS

Professor Don Berwick has said that the NHS is better placed to ‘truly integrate care’ than any other global health system and has encouraged it to pursue partnership working.

Former adviser to Barack Obama, Berwick claimed that the current fragmented nature of services could be improved and solved if all local health and care organisations worked in partnership and pooled resources, encouraging the progression of a ‘system that supports an individual’s complete needs’, rather than treating care problems ‘in isolation’.

Additionally, Berwick said the health sector should use the wisdom and experience of existing NHS staff, of whom it would be ‘smart to earn from’. The King’s Fund advisor also said that new care models programme had generated a faculty of knowledgeable clinicians, managers, nurses and doctors who could become teachers to the country.

Berwick said: “I think the NHS probably has a better chance to truly integrate care than almost any other health care system in the world. We’re not our diseases, we’re not a broken arm or diabetes we’re whole people who are making journeys through our lives and the care system has to honour and respect that.

“There’s no reason the NHS can’t have the best care in the world, why you can’t take an appropriate proportion of your efforts and move them upstream to the causes of illness and use social determinants to prevent illness. There’s no reason why you have to waste money; you have limited resources and you can use those resources increasingly wisely.”