Commons Health Select Committee, 18 February 2014
- This report covers Pay restraint, Allocation of resources, Trusts and Foundation Trusts, Integration of health and social care, Reconfiguration, System leadership, Competition, "Cherry-picking".
- Conclusions include:
- 8. The Committee continues to believe that fragmented commissioning structures significantly inhibit the growth of truly integrated services. The Committee has recommended in previous reports that Health and Wellbeing Boards should be encouraged to develop their role to provide an integrated commissioners' view of the transformative change which is necessary in our health and care system. (Paragraph 62)
- 10. The Committee believes that in the absence of stronger commissioners and a commitment to ring-fenced real terms funding for health and social care, there is a serious risk to both the quality and availability of care services to vulnerable people in the years ahead. (Paragraph 64)
- 11. Advocating service integration without recognising that the consequence of integration is reconfiguration of acute services is simply dishonest. (Paragraph 70)
- 15. Health and Wellbeing Boards were established by Parliament to enable commissioners to take a view across the whole of a local health and care economy. In the light of the urgent need to increase the pace and scale of service reconfiguration in the health and care system, the Committee repeats the recommendation it has made in earlier reports that the role of Health and Wellbeing Boards needs to develop to allow them to become effective commissioners of joined-up health and care services. (Paragraph 80)
