Care Planning

A quest to find, identify and manage differently the ‘top 2%’ of patients is increasingly occupying NHS managers. Don Redding, National Voices Director of Policty explores the consequences.

At the end of the month, the Chancellor will set out spending limits for the rest of the Parliament, and it’s unlikely to say the least that there will be any big giveaways for public services. This sets a challenge for the National Voices annual conference later this week, which will discuss the future for person centred care, and ask whether it could be the solution in hard times?

Sam Bennett, Head of Integrated Personal Commissioning and Personal Health Budgets has written this blog which highlights the importance of personal health budgets in improving wellbeing outcomes and making choice and control a reality for people. This blog also outlines the need to see people as active participants in their care, not as passive recipients of services.

Simply, sensibly, person-centredly brilliant

A fantastic thing has happened to me in the NHS over this last month.  It involves care planning and it goes like this. 

I have a 15 year old repetitive strain injury (RSI) which means it is painful to use computers and keyboards at times. As my work is office based, this has quite an impact on my life. I have been managing it OK-ish and have had support from several different physios and osteopaths at various times, with varying degrees of success. However, during a recent nasty flare up I was sent to meet Chris Williams, a physiotherapist at Sherwood Forest Hospitals. 

Chris was different to the other professionals.

At National Voices we have been having some great conversations around care and support planning. Here we’d like to introduce you to one of its champions, the award-winning Dr Ian Greaves, of Gnosall Surgery, to share some of his innovative ideas. And congratulations to Ian and his fellow Staffordshire GPs for winning the NHS Innovation Challenge Prize for Dementia last month.