Rebalancing funds away from hospitals into community care might be what the NHS needs to meet contemporary care requirements. The report, ‘What should national policy-makers do to make care closer to home a reality?’, from the King’s Fund outlines how previous attempts to move care closer to home have ‘failed’ and how the NHS needs to modernise their care model by shifting their focus onto out-of-hospital community services.
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‘For ministers to succeed where their predecessors have failed, they will need to take bold action […] delivering this change will require hard targets, including the mandated rebalancing of funding towards primary and community services,’ Beccy Baird, Senior Fellow at The King’s Fund and co-author of the report, said. ‘Rebalancing NHS funding away from hospitals may sound counter-intuitive, and may even face some public criticism, but the truth is that the long-term solution to our over-crowded hospitals lies in boosting out of hospital services.’
The report outlined recommendations to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to successfully deliver the shift from hospital to community. The authors emphasised a reform of adult social care; greater financial autonomy for GPs and ICBs and investment into technology to successfully transition care into the community. Health leaders have supported the findings of the report in line with the Government’s 10-year plan for the NHS.
‘The key messages of this new report are all welcome and align with the direction of travel NHS leaders are working towards.’ Ruth Rankine, primary care director at the NHS Confederation said. ‘The report is also right to underline the importance of social care to the future of the NHS. Only through wholesale reform of the sector can we help more people leave hospital sooner, recover at home and stay independent rather than facing repeated hospital admissions.’