Charlotte Leslie – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Charlotte Leslie on 2015-12-08.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the integrated health and social care system in Northern Ireland in formulating policy on how to better integrate health and social care.
Alistair Burt
The Department regularly reviews international evidence in relation to integrated health and social care services. While Northern Ireland has had a structurally integrated health and social care system since 1973, and in more recent years has undergone a restructure in an effort to deliver more coordinated and integrated care, academic evaluation of integration in Northern Ireland has been relatively limited to date. Nonetheless, officials continue to monitor new publications on this subject.
It is important to note that while there is a growing body of evidence from around the world about what works with regard to integration, no country has successfully delivered integration on a universal scale. Moreover, due to fundamental differences in the design of different health and care systems it is not straightforward to apply lessons learnt elsewhere to the English system.
More generally, the Government recently reemphasised its ambition to integrate health and social care across England by 2020, and will continue to monitor international evidence as policy is formulated with respect to this programme.
