Healthcare revolution must emphasise community care The future of the NHS depends on it taking a radical approach to health services. Can it shift away from a hospital-based model to focus on individual independence?
Our society’s dependence on acute-care hospitals, which are often not the best places for healthcare issues to be dealt with, must be reduced dramatically over the next few years. That was the general agreement at a recent Guardian roundtable, sponsored by Optum, that looked at the role community services will play in the future of the NHS. The direction for the NHS is towards devolved services, and there are a host of positive reasons for developing them in that way, experts from NHS England, healthcare providers and charities were told at the event.
The problem with hospitals is that they are geared up for acute care and tend to follow narrow pathways focusing in on a particular problem, the roundtable heard, when a more holistic approach to health is what is needed.
“For generations, we've gone to ask the doctor for the answers to our health problems,” said Madeleine Starr of Carers UK. Continue reading... The Guardian
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