Recently, I was running a training session
for people who work in Social Care. They
were aware that Government have a drive to “Integrate” Health and Social Care
services. Like most of us they were
wondering when and if this drive would move beyond service integration and into
structural merger.
We began to talk about how the NHS now
functions in England and they all admitted to being pretty unclear about how
their “partner” organisation works. I
tried to explain how the NHS works post the “Lansley” reforms – and frankly
failed!
The more I talked, the less
clear they looked.
During a much needed coffee break, I was
rather desperately thinking about how to bring some clarity to our discussion.
Thankfully, I managed to remember, an excellent short video produced by the
Kings Fund, called An
alternative guide to the new NHS in England
By the time the course participants had returned from coffee I had logged on to YouTube and was able to play the video.
Well, the day was saved! After just 7 minutes the group had a pretty
good overview of the NHS and were able to work out how the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG's) related to NHS
England and what the role of Commissioning Support Units are!
So, I take my hat of to the Kings Fund! It’s a real achievement to bring some semblance
of clarity to the workings of the modern NHS.
I wonder if they would like to have a go at how to travel from A to B,
by train and do so at the lowest cost and by a reasonable route?
Perhaps not. That may be a challenge beyond
even the Kings Fund!
Meanwhile, if you want to get a better
understanding of how the modern NHS works, I suggest you watch the attached clip.
John Dennis
