The UK and its constituent countries are taking steps to integrate health, social, and community care to create a better service for their people and create better healthcare outcomes. Integrated healthcare aims to deliver care that meets the needs of people. By taking into account their social care and community care demands, healthcare services can achieve better outcomes in shorter time frames while also reducing costs.
Assessing Health With Tests And Scans
Integrated healthcare aims to provide better care outcomes for patients. When providing healthcare, it can be beneficial to both the patient and the healthcare provider to complete regular checkups and health assessments. There are many different kinds of tests and scans that can be performed to get a more complete picture of the health of a patient.
For instance, Echelon Health can complete thorough health assessments which provide both patients and doctors with vital insights into the health and well-being of the body. This gives doctors and healthcare providers an accurate baseline of data to plan healthcare for the patient. It also helps doctors to discover and treat any underlying medical issues that may have gone unnoticed before the assessment.
Integrating Physical, Mental, And Social Health
Steps are being taken in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to integrate the different aspects of healthcare and provide a better, streamlined service. Each country is designing its own system to suit its people, with Scotland creating the National Care Service. This new authority intends to balance investment and resource allocation between health, social, and community care services.
There are a lot of challenges associated with bringing these different types of care together to provide communities with an integrated healthcare service. The Health and Care Act established Integrated Care Boards. Here, representatives from the NHS, social care services, and local authorities can come together to pool both financial and physical resources to provide better care outcomes in their communities.
The Goals Of Integrated Care
For many decades the UK government and NHS have been looking for ways to improve the quality of care UK citizens receive across both the National Health Services and Social Services. The goals are to reduce inequality in healthcare outcomes across various demographics and improve the patient experience. Integrated healthcare also aims to streamline costs by creating stronger links between the different types of health and social care.
Monitoring the success of integrated care across the UK is another of the challenges integrated care is facing. Hospital services and GP services generate a lot more data than social care services and community care services. As a part of the push towards integrated healthcare, data collection and monitoring systems have to be designed and implemented to help manage social and community care services. This will lead to more efficient funding and resource allocation and better healthcare outcomes, but it will take time to see these results.
In time our health, social, and community care services are going to be able to provide tailored healthcare for patients that support both their physical and mental well-being as well as their welfare. The integration of our care services will provide a higher standard of care in a cost-efficient way that will lead to better healthcare outcomes for all people of the UK.