healthmedicinet

Mr Hunt said the changes would mean a transformation in the way care is
delivered, to respond better to the needs of the country’s ageing
population.

Writing for The Telegraph, setting out his ambitions for health and
social care, he said the new model was part of a three-part plan to respond
to the challenges facing the population.

“The first pillar of our plan is to change the basic NHS model from one
centred on hospital care to one that helps people stay healthy and happy at
home,” he writes. “Prevention is better than cure – not just for the
patient, but for the NHS which picks up the tab when things go wrong.”

The prevention of 160,000 emergency stays in hospital each year would alone
save £500m a year, he said.

The £5.3bn fund, drawn from NHS and councils’ budgets, is only to be spent on
schemes which have been approved by health and social care officials,
because they set out ways to avoid unnecessary hospital stays and improve
the care given to people in their own homes.

The plans also promise to reduce the numbers stuck in hospital when they do
not need to be there, with ambitions to reduce the number of “delayed
discharges” by 100,000, in the next year.

Last week, Simon Stevens, the head of the health service, laid out a five year
“forward view” for the NHS which said services need an extra £8bn on top of
inflation in the next Parliament to keep up with rising demand.

The Conservatives have pledged to at least protect funding in line with
inflation.

In the article for this newspaper, Mr Hunt said the funding of the NHS depends
on a strong economy, but suggested Britain’s current economic progress gave
grounds for optimism.

“We should never forget that the single most important thing for a strong NHS
is a strong economy,” he writes. “Countries that forgot their deficit ended
up cutting their health budgets, Greece by 14 per cent and Portugal by 17
per cent – and we must never make the same mistake.

“But just as you need a long term plan for the economy, you also need a long
term plan for the NHS. The NHS England Forward View last week laid the
ground – and today I am announcing the key pillars of the government’s
response, all underpinned by the fastest growing economy in the G7.”

Mr Hunt said the new £5bn fund to join up care between hospitals, GPs and
social care, was one of three pillars of the Government’s plans for the NHS.

He said the NHS also needed to embrace the “technology revolution” in
healthcare, as sectors such as banking, retail and travel have, and to
improve the efficiency of its systems.

The Health Secretary said the most crucial but most difficult change ahead was
to “get the culture right”.

“Too often doctors and nurses have felt frustrated by a culture that stops
them putting patients first,” he writes. “We need to change the NHS so that
openness about outcomes becomes the norm and we are better at stopping the
estimated 12,000 avoidable deaths we still have in the NHS every year.”

Labour atttacked the plans as “depressingly unambitious”.

Liz Kendall, Labour’s Shadow Minister for Care and Older People, said: “Patients
and taxpayers urgently need more joined-up services that help keep people
healthy and living at home, rather than ending up in hospital.

“The government’s Better Care Fund is depressingly unambitious. It only
brings together around four percent of the total we spend on the NHS and
social care.”