Legally speaking – Integration is here to stay

Integration has been buzzword of the moment for some time. The government used the Health and Social Care Act to impose new duties on commissioners and regulators to promote integration of services. It also established local authority Health & Wellbeing Boards to jointly assess needs for health and social care services and encourage integration. This gave integration a place at the heart of the new health and social care landscape. However doubts have recently been expressed as to how much impact the new emphasis on integration would have. Sceptics pointed out that there is no clear definition of integration and that the legal duties are to promote and encourage, not to actually achieve change – what are the success measures? And earlier this month the press reported that Sir David Nicholson, Chief Executive of the NHS, had made negative comments about the prospects of integration achieving savings for the NHS. Might integration prove to be a case of emperors’ new clothes, a concept that would quietly be shifted to the side-lines in the face of other priorities?