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Community services need new national funding bid, says outgoing NHS England director
The national clinical director for older people has announced he is leaving NHS England and said a major government funding settlement will be needed to maintain progress and take community services to the ‘next stage’.
Adrian Hayter joined NHSE in 2019 as NCD for older people and integrated person centred care.
Dr Hayter, who is also a longstanding GP partner in Berkshire, said community services were now much more prominent at NHSE — and in its asks of the service – than they were four years ago.
He said: “When I first came in, there wasn’t very much in planning guidance about what was happening in the community at all. Now that is different and we are expecting a range of initiatives in 2024.
“But the future is that all of these things are not individual programmes - they’re all part of a particular approach to how we manage and support people for as long as possible in their own homes.
“Urgent community response [where services are required to respond within two-hours to urgent needs, referred from a range of services] and virtual wards are a continuum of care.
“And the growth of virtual wards have helped extend what happens in the community all the way through to the acute level care.”
National long-term funding for several of the new services – badged in the 2019 long-term plan as “Aging Well” – is also now due to end, with integrated care boards instead asked to commission them locally.
Dr Hayter warned that, as well as moving those services closer together, there needed to be a future government spending review settlement aimed at growing community services, to meet the needs of the rapidly ageing population.
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Source: HSJ, 18 December 2023