Welcome for Cornish care “pioneer”

West Cornwall MP, Andrew George, has welcomed the Government’s announcement that Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly has been put forward as one of 14 integrated health and social care “pioneers” today.

Mr George, who met Care Minister, Norman Lamb MP, earlier this week to emphasise the importance of integration of health and social care is delighted that Cornwall has been given a pioneering role.

Mr George said: “Recent examples of failings in the system have highlighted the need for far better integration and the breaking down of barriers between acute hospitals, primary care, community hospitals and the social care sectors.

“It is evidently barmy to have patients who should be discharged kept in acute hospitals which already suffer bed shortages but cannot then discharge to a community hospital, a care home or with social care support, to their own homes, because either community hospital beds have been closed or the funding packages cannot be put in place.

“Health and social care is integrated at the Department of Health’s Headquarters in Whitehall but becomes fragmented when silos of funding are transferred and the multiplicity of health chiefs who contract or sub-contract responsibilities to agencies, companies and trusts.

“I hope that this Pioneer status will provide the impetus to health and social care managers to break down the financial and administrative barriers between services.

“We should be able to join care around the people who need it rather than force them to fit their lives around the absurd administrative and financial structures which have developed to meet managerial and administrative objectives.”

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