Re-inventing a Long Term Dream: Do we need new systems to deliver “working together” We run a huge risk of repeating the mistakes of the policy 10 (PPM ?70) years ago, thinking that integration is solved just by fiddling with organizational form options” M. Winn 21.5.2018 I have had a career long passion in delivering services across sector boundaries as geriatric service lead of hospital and community health facilities, running the Institute’s Excellent Care Award, participating in the development of Stroke Illness pathways , and as a former chair of joint planning in Birmingham. My purpose with this publication is to seek examples of Good Practice, building on our experience from the “Excellent Care Award” to inform the work now being done under the new national drive to promote integration in commissioning and in delivering health and social care. The driver for this strategy is the long-standing perception that underfunded fragmented poorly delivered services can be reorganized to provide cost effective services with the person in need at the centre of the change required. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and NHS England (NHSE) see the patient/citizen as the pivot round which service configuration should be structured. But most service planning is initiated centrally and in the recent Sustainability Transformation Partnerships (STPs now becoming Integrated Care Systems (ICS)) the service user seems the last group involved in planning and driving service change. NHS clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) do have a requirement to consult their populations and some are doing this well but many are too small and lack the skills to deliver.

Hello from the new Chair

As the newly elected Chair, I thought this may be an opportune moment to introduce myself and lay out a little of my vision for the Institute, given all that is happening within the West Midlands.

So, Hello! My name is Dr Andrew Dayani. I am Executive Medical Director at Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS FT and was a GP for 21 years before moving into an Executive Director role. That gives you a flavour, but doesn’t tell the whole story, as I have also been an Occupational Physician, Community Hospital doctor and trained in Dermatology and Cardiology, whilst being involved in commissioning and medical politics. I like to keep busy!  Until last year I lived and worked in Somerset.

More Information, Less Accessibility
Mike Marshall MIHM, DHSM – IAH Trustee

I have probably driven my Trustee colleagues to distraction over completing my first ever blog for the West Midlands Institute of Ageing and Health. It was due in January 2018 and I was ill at the time. Since then holidays, retired life and procrastination seem to have got in the way. It’s always been the same: as a Health and Social Care practitioner / Manager/ Commissioner - reports finished at the deadline and funding bids submitted on the day (the last of which gained £2.3 million from the Government!).
 
Well, here I am finally at the keyboard, relatively fit and able, unlike many of the older people we seek to support through the Institute’s work.
I can travel to my GP, access hospital appointments (unfortunately not in my home town of Bromsgrove in the actual community hospital I commissioned) but in Redditch (or Kidderminster) some 7 miles away.
 
Should I have experienced a stroke the journey would be to Evesham, 48 miles round-trip with no direct bus route. Trains? Forget it. Older relative, no car? – no chance.