Third sector organisations – the forgotten dimension of integrated care?

By Robin Miller, Senior Fellow at the University of Birmingham and Co-Editor of the Journal of Integrated Care

The need for better integrated working between health and social care and acute and community services has been recognised for many years in policy and practice. However, despite this emphasis, many older people and their families continue to experience services that do not communicate effectively, are far from seamless, and require considerable persistence to successfully navigate. The increasing challenge of responding to our changing demography with limited resources means that it is more important than ever that we avoid wasteful duplication or gaps that result in older people being unnecessarily admitted to residential care or hospital.

Let’s hear it for Allied Healthcare Professionals

Prof David Oliver is a Consultant Geriatrician in Berkshire and a visiting Professor in Medicine of Older People at City University, London. He is President Elect of the British Geriatrics Society.

David writes in the King’s Fund blog on the how critical the work of Allied Healthcare Professionals (AHPs) is to the care of older people:

Reflecting on our recent paper on the NHS and social care workforce, modern health care is a team venture. It is impossible to deliver effective care without the crucial contribution of highly trained allied health professionals (or AHPs). I look after older people with complex needs for a living. Alongside multiple co-morbidities, many have social vulnerability, functional impairment or communication difficulties which complicate the acute problem they presented with. This is the reality of modern hospital case-mix. Both Francis Inquiries recognised that it was the care of such frail older patients that had caused most concern.

[…] It’s high time we gave AHPs overdue recognition as key players in services that are now team ventures. Population demographics mean that increasingly the business of health care will be the business of caring for older people who require a genuinely multidisciplinary approach. We can’t do it without them.

Read the full article on the Kings Fund blog here.