House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts 24 April 2017
- The Committee found that the Better Care Fund (BCF) has failed to save money, reduce emergency admissions to hospitals and reduce the number of days people remain stuck in hospital unnecessarily.
- They found that witnesses, Chris Wormald (Department of Health), Jo Farrar (Department for Communities and Local Government), Simon Stevens (NHS England), and Sarah Pickup, (LGA) had displayed "an appallingly casual attitude to the targets that had been set" for reducing emergency admissions and delayed transfers of care, both of which have actually increased and conclude that the Fund "was little more than a complicated ruse to transfer money from health to local government to paper over the funding pressures on adult social care".
- They conclude that, while STPs are now expected to delivery integration, place-based planning will be critical to the future of health and social care.
- To succeed the NHS must find better ways to engage more genuinely with local government and local populations.
