Wednesday 27 May 2015

Will Jeremy Hunt be able to join up health and social care? | Anne Perkins

Will Jeremy Hunt be able to join up health and social care? | Anne  The health secretary is not new to his brief, but that won’t make it any easier to bridge the damaging culture gap between health and social care and successfully integrate services

When the Queen delivers her speech from the throne today, the one thing there won’t be is new legislation on health or social care. The word in Richmond House is Carry on Quietly, or as quietly as possible, while trying to navigate through a potentially catastrophic debt crisis among NHS foundation trusts that only adds to the familiar pressures of demography and the need to reform.

But Jeremy Hunt starts with some advantages, not least that for him this is of course not a start, merely a return to business. Not since Norman Fowler back in the 1980s has a health secretarystayed in post through an election. And although he has yet to clock up three full years in the post, Hunt has already served longer than anyone since Alan Milburn set off with reforming zeal in 1999. So at least he knows what he has to do.

Once again the professionals are nervously circling the utopian future of integrated health and social care

Much hangs on the success of the pioneering project to devolve the health budget in Manchester Continue reading... The Guardian

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