Blueprint launched for NHS and social care reform following pandemic

The government has published a White Paper, ‘Integration and Innovation: working together to improve health and social care for all’ white paper’, that sets out proposals to join up health and care services and embed lessons learned from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic for a Health and Care Bill in England

The paper is not the long-awaited social care White Paper which is expected later this year but a package of stated measures seek to make integrated care the default, reduce legal bureaucracy, and better support social care, public health and the NHS.

The reforms are intended to better enable the health and care sector to use technology in a modern way, establish a better platform to support staff and patient care, for example by improving the quality and availability of data across the health and care sector to enable systems to plan for the future care of their communities.

It is interesting to note that there are only a couple of references to housing, primarily in relation to building partnerships, perhaps under the new duty to collaborate.