Health and Social Care Integration

• Integration is the combination of processes, methods and tools that facilitate integrated care.
• Integrated care results when the culmination of these processes directly benefits communities, patients or service users – it is by definition ‘patient-centred’ and ‘population-oriented’. Integrated care may be judged successful if it contributes to better care experiences; improved care outcomes; delivered more cost effectively

During the planning, implementation and optimisation of integrated pathways, a number of challenges arise for individual care providers, including:

• Bringing together primary medical services and community health providers around the needs of individual patients
• Addressing an unsustainable acute sector
• Developing capacity in primary care to take on new services
• Managing demand and developing new care models
• Establishing effective clinical leadership for change
• Overcoming professional tribalism and turf wars
• Addressing the lack of good data and IT to drive integration, e.g. in targeting the right people to receive it
• Involving the public and creating a narrative about new models of care
• Establishing new forms of organisation and governance (where these are needed)
• Learning from elsewhere in the UK and overseas.

There are a number of success factors that can be both planned and implemented to help assure better integration of care:

• Integration can be undertaken between organisations, or between different clinical or service departments within and between organisations
• It can focus on joining up primary, community and hospital services (‘vertical’ integration) or involve multi-disciplinary teamwork between health and social care professionals (‘horizontal’ integration)
• Integration may be ‘real’ (i.e. into a single new organisation) or ‘virtual’ (i.e. a network of separate providers, often linked contractually)
• It may involve providers collaborating, but it may also entail integration between commissioners, as when budgets are pooled
• There are also opportunities to bring together responsibility for commissioning and provision. When this happens, clinicians and managers are able to use budgets either to provide more services directly or to commission these services from others: so-called ‘make or buy’ decisions.

To help assure a safely accelerated care integration process, use our ‘Optimise’ method to generate maximum value and facilitated buy-in from your senior stakeholders.

Types of organisations where we’ve assisted facilitation of integrated health and social care service relationships:

• Clinical Commission Groups
• Councils: Counties, Unitary, Metropolitan and Boroughs
• University and other NHS Foundation Trusts
• Mental Health Trusts
• Health and Care Commissioning organisations
• Ambulance Service NHS Trusts

STP areas:

• Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire STP
• Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes
• Birmingham and Solihull STP
• Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire STP
• Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West STP
• Cambridgeshire and Peterborough STP
• Cheshire and Merseyside Health and Care Partnership
• Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly STP
• Coventry and Warwickshire STP
• Devon STP
• Dorset STP
• Durham, Darlington, Teesside, Hambleton, Richmondshire and Whitby STP
• East London Health & Care Partnership
• Frequently asked questions – STPs
• Frimley Health and Care STP
• Gloucestershire STP
• Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership
• Hampshire and the Isle of Wight STP
• Herefordshire and Worcestershire STP
• Hertfordshire and West Essex STP
• Humber, Coast and Vale STP
• Joined Up Care Derbyshire
• Kent and Medway STP
• Lancashire and South Cumbria STP
• Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland STP
• Lincolnshire STP
• Mid and South Essex STP
• Norfolk and Waveney STP
• North Cumbria STP
• North London STP
• North West London STP
• Northamptonshire STP
• Northumberland, Tyne and Wear and North Durham STP
• Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Health and Care STP
• Shropshire and Telford and Wrekin STP
• Somerset STP
• South East London STP
• South West London Health and Care Partnership
• South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw STP
• Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent STP
• Suffolk and North East Essex STP
• Surrey Heartlands Health and Care Partnership
• Sussex and East Surrey STP
• Sustainability and transformation partnerships progress dashboard
• The Black Country and West Birmingham STP
• West Yorkshire and Harrogate STP