Merging – or integrating – health and social care

A recent Localis report ‘Rebooting Health and Social Care Integration: An agenda for more person centred care’ includes the following insight from a former Department of Health adviser:

“If you’re flying to Singapore, but have to change airlines en route, at no point does anyone suggest the airlines merge. We put the passenger in charge and the airlines build it around them.”

The report’s author acknowledges what is clearly true: ‘a patient, service user (or passenger) doesn’t care how it all works, as long it works.’

Similarly, when people expect newcomers to ‘integrate’ into a community they join, they don’t expect them to somehow combine with existing community members. Instead, they use integration to refer to people following common norms or systems.

These analogies raise an important question for health and social care integration in Scotland. Is the best approach to ‘merge’ NHS and local authority functions, or to ensure they operate in such a way that users see a seamless service?

Above all, our focus should be on ensuring health and social care integration gives the person receiving care or treatment greater independence and control.

You can read the Localis report ‘Rebooting Health and Social Care Integration: An agenda for more person centred care’ here.