Integrating care across health and social care

Future demographics and ever tightening resources dictate the need to radically redesign services. With the strategic integration of health and social care in Highland in April 2012, the Lochaber team have been one of the leaders of putting strategic policy reform into action. Some two years on, at all levels, and across all professions, they have been prepared to challenge traditional power and boundaries; models of care and come together to make far better use of all resources to benefit many more people. Some of the improvements have included: i) fewer points of contact; ii) more co-ordinated approach to care and allocating resource; iii) co-location of staff and joint working across professionals; iv) iii) reduction in length of stay and hospital admissions; iv) significant savings from reduced running costs and cost avoidance (£1million). Fundamentally it has been about a change in culture.