Image:Stower/Wikipedia
“Integration” is a constant buzzword in current plans for the health service. Liverpool CCG's “Healthy Liverpool: The Blueprint” mentions it 60 times. Introducing the Healthy Liverpool Prospectus in 2014, Mayor Joe Anderson outlined a vision “for an Integrated Health and Social Care System for Liverpool”... and “a major new initiative to integrate out of hours services” and a “high quality, integrated 24/7 service”. The Prospectus said the Commission “recommended that a neighbourhood model is the best way of achieving an integrated Liverpool Health and Social Care system”.
But something else is barely mentioned these days: an integrated National Health Service, with integrated national clinical standards, nationally recommended treatments, national accountability, integrated funding through general taxation, integrated methods of allocating resources to areas of greatest need, an integrated national system of pay, terms and conditions for health service staff.
