Integration of Primary and Community Care (Committee Report)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)
I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, and all the committee, for their work on this report. I hope that noble Lords will see from my speech that this report is appreciated. Directly on the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay: the recommendations are welcome, and I hope that my speech will set out how we are acting on them.
Before I get into the detail, like other noble Lords, I want to acknowledge my noble friend Lord Jamieson’s maiden speech. He brings a wealth of experience to this, both professionally and from local government. I was particularly struck by his passion for housing. I must admit it is one that I share: it is core to so many people’s lives, in terms of well-being, their sense of happiness, security and stability, and, of course, their health. I look forward to discussing further how we can make that the core of so many things. As the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, rightly said, the noble Lord’s mother would be proud of him today.
I will start by recognising the points made by all noble Lords about the importance of primary care and community care integration. The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, said that nearly all of the four former Ministers strongly made the point that we see more and more resources going to hospitals, and we also know that there are more and more patients who do not need to go there. Around 50% of the people who go to A&E do not really need to be there. We see a lot of children under 12 going in with tooth decay, when better primary care and dental services would avoid that. Unless we change things, we will see the situation set out by the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson: staff levels in healthcare will go from one in seven of the population to one in four, and then one in three.
I think we all agree that we have to get upstream of the problem. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, rightly set out the need for prevention. I have seen some excellent examples of that, and Redhill is just one. The noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, and others described the excellent examples we have seen in the work of Professor Sam Everington in east London: making primary care central to care in the community, and assessing how many services can be taken out of acute settings.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, said, centring the service around the needs of the individual, in contrast to the existing set-up, needs a shift in resources towards primary care. Our belief is that that can occur only if the ICBs, ICPs and ICSs are equipped with the information and have that helicopter view and the ability to shift resources from one to the other.
The noble Baroness, Lady Merron, asked a very direct and correct question about why we are increasing hospital care resources. I have some lived-in experience of that. It is a gutsy move to say that we will shift resources away from the hospitals. To make the whole equation work, you are often talking about reducing hospital services and the number of hospital beds, and putting them in the community instead, which we all agree is absolutely the right way to go. But we all know the reaction you get from local groups as soon as you try to do something like that. I completely agree that “neighbourhood health service” should be the name. It takes cross-party work to do that, regardless of who is in government after the next election. Speaking candidly, we need to provide each other with air cover during some of those difficult conversations, including with the ICBs and ICSs. For my part, I pledge to play that role, whether I am sitting on this Bench, the Bench opposite or any other bench after the election.
I am sorry that the government response was seen as disappointing. I hope we can address a lot of the issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley. We agree with the whole emphasis of the report and its recommendations, the analysis of the problems and the need to focus resources on primary care and prevention. We also agree with the substance of most of the recommendations.
Our main difference is whether we should be mandating the recommendations on the ICBs, ICPs and ICSs, versus enabling them to adopt them. For want of a better word, this is a bet that we are putting on the ICBs, that they are the right bodies to do this, giving them the time and the space to try to do that. I admit that I am naturally resistant—and that is likely to show in the emphasis in many of my replies—on whether we should be mandating them, when we want to give them the flexibilities to do those things at a local level. We should be enabling them to do it, and we should be encouraging them to do it, but where we stop earlier is on whether we should be insisting and mandating them.
I hope that that gives a general sense, but I shall turn to each part, starting with structure and organisation. I agree with the committee’s recommendations to allow the ICSs the appropriate time to mature before introducing any wholesale system reforms. I hear the point of the noble Lord, Lord Allan, that three years is a long time. We need to make sure that we get some of those early indicators as we go along, but at the same time we need to give them time to bed down and accept that some will do a better job than others, which of course is the inevitable consequence of giving people the ability to manage their own local systems.
On the integration, we are giving these bodies the ability to bring together the NHS, the councils, the voluntary sector and the others, with the focus on prevention and better outcomes. The noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, emphasised the importance of prevention, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, addressed the raising of life expectancy and quality of life. I am pleased to inform the House that we see the NHS health check as a flagship cardiovascular disease prevention programme. As mentioned, using the app is a key way in which people can engage with that, book their services and have a lot of those type of tests at home.
With respect to the committee’s recommendation relating to a single accountable officer and coterminosity, ICSs have the flexibility to develop accountability arrangements that best meets the need of their local population. We have various successful models of accountability implemented, including as partnerships and committees. Again, where an ICS identifies that its boundary is not meeting local needs, it can request a review. Local authorities are a critical partner here. The NHS has recently published a process for boundary change requests that requires support from all local authority partners in this. At the same time, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, mentioned in her speech some of the challenges around being coterminous with borders, and how that can cut across some of the things that we want to see happening in terms of choice. It is not always a straightforward question. Again, that shows that this should not be something we are mandating, but we are enabling the ICBs to address that, if it is the right thing for their area.
On the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, on elected officials chairing ICBs, NHS England has set criteria prohibiting all ICB chairs and non-exec members from holding a public office role, or a role in the healthcare organisation within the ICB area. However, the elected local authority, the local government officials, are able to chair the ICP—the partnership—which of course is a very important committee that sets the health and care strategy.
The committee recommends that the CQC pilot ICS assessments are widely disseminated—a point the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, also raised. I can confirm that the CQC will publish the pilot findings as narrative reports that will be available to the public. The CQC assessments will consider how well health and social care are working together to deliver high-quality care, and the assessment will also score each ICS against the three themes of leadership, integration, quality and safety—I think that is four themes, actually; that is what happens when you try to adjust the brief.
On primary care contracts and funding, as the noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, also mentioned, the primary care contracts are kept under review and we will consult the profession on any proposed changes. As I think noble Lords know, we launched a public consultation in December 2023 on inclusive schemes and expect to publish a government response later this year.
On the co-location point which the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, raised, the Government agree with the benefits of co-location and multiple disciplinary teams for promoting integration, and we expect the different models of integration to be implemented across the country based on local needs and the availability of estates.
The noble Baroness, Lady Merron, mentioned investing in primary care. We want GPs to deliver the best care to patients, which is why we are backing the NHS with this significant capital investment in this space. That includes the £4.2 billion this year in operational capital for integrated care boards to allocate locally, including to primary care.
The committee outlined a suggestion to better utilise the better care fund and pooling of budgets. The Government encourage local areas to maximise the full potential of the better care fund and to pool budgets. We have seen local areas committing additional money to their better care fund to support joint commissioning and integration. Place-level committees are crucial to delivering integration, and the Government published a toolkit in October 2023 to support the development of shared outcomes as a powerful means of promoting joint working.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, raised, proactive care involves providing personalised and co-ordinated care and support for people living with complex health and care needs. A good example of where this works well is the Jean Bishop Integrated Care Centre in Hull, a geriatric-led multidisciplinary service. Measured outcomes show that, between April 2019 and September 2022, the service contributed to a 13.6% reduction in emergency hospital attendance for patients aged over 80. Over the same time, there was a 17.6% reduction in emergency department attendances for patients in care homes. However—this also relates to the point on training later on—where we have fantastic examples such as that one, we need to make sure that that is disseminated and understood as part of the integration sharing.
On systems and data sharing, I have to admit that, like the noble Lord, Lord Allan—this will not be a surprise to many people—I am a fellow data anorak. I understand the importance of the NHS number and common place references in that. I learned about fuzzy data matching the hard way in one of my earlier jobs. You need only to look at what happened to the local Laura Ashley store in Kyiv, funnily enough, to see the consequences of fuzzy data matching and having a misallocation of dress sizes, shapes and colours because I did not fully understand the skew references in terms of fully data matching. Therefore I understood the hard way and the consequences of that.
I think we all understand the point the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, made about the frustration that many people increasingly express.
The DHSC was called by the report to
“publish high level guidance to standardise the collection of data and portability requirements in commercial data-sharing software, especially for social determinants of health”,
and mandate how clinicians “code” information. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, raised a key point on responsible handling of data. We already set standards of coding for data and set national standards for data systems to ensure interoperability. The Government have published a plan for digital health and social care that includes milestones for setting standards on interoperability and systems architecture, enabling all relevant health and care data to be accessed by those with a legitimate right to access it at the point of need, no matter where it is held. We are also moving to a system of data access by default for secondary users of NHS data, which will be supported by the implementation of the secure data environments—SDEs—which mean that data from NHS and related services can be used for research without identifying information needing to be shared.
The report also calls for one or more interoperable data systems to be centrally procured, as was rightly flagged as a key issue by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. We do not believe that the solution lies in the purchase of a single system for the NHS—we have all seen the past problems that has led to—but we believe it involves the need for a common set of standards and cloud-based architecture to ensure that digital records can be shared electronically, that services are interoperable, and that you can connect information based on the NHS number of the individual rather than one organisation. That will improve the provision of safe and personalised care as patients move between different parts of the health service and the social care system. The approach taken seeks to strike an effective balance between central and local initiatives.
On the question from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, about sharing one prescription record, I say that this is where we see that Pharmacy First has been a vital enabler. Making sure that we have the systems right so that the pharmacy can write into the GP records to show what it is prescribing the patient gives a blueprint that we can repeat across all the systems—it gives the writing capability to do that, so to speak. All 42 ICBs have had a connecting care record solution since March 2022, which is fundamental to how services can share their information.
I am coming up to time. I will quickly say that I agree with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, on workforce and training, and that integration of training should be part of all that. I conclude by saying that I will follow up in writing, as ever, to make sure I pick up any questions that have not been answered. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, once more on his maiden speech.