Primary Care: Inequality

Lord Allan of Hallam Excerpts

Monday 19th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)]

My Lords, as well as the Westminster pilot, studies by organisations such as Imperial College have shown the potential for significant benefits to come from the community health worker model, yet the Minister said in his first response that the department had carried out no formal assessment of the model. Given the potential to improve health outcomes and make savings in acute services, does he agree that such a formal assessment would make sense? Is it something the department would like to do but has just not got round to yet?

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

The noble Lord raises a good point. He is right that it is still relatively early days: we have to give it an opportunity to embed. I mentioned Churchill Gardens, but it is also happening in rural areas such as Cornwall, west Yorkshire and other parts of the country. We want to see how the scheme works out, because there will be similar results but with a different flavour depending on whether the area is rural, city, metropolitan or coastal.