Guardian view on NHS funding: integrating hospital and community care is right, but..

[Northerner]

As more details emerge about the crisis in the quality of care at Colchester general hospital, a new and authoritative report warns that whatever the failings in one Essex hospital trust, the whole of the NHS is heading for trouble. Less than a week after the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, promised another £300m to ease pressure on A&E services – hoping to stave off a winter crisis in the runup to next May’s general election – today’s report argues that no politician of any major party has begun to address the reality of the funding gap precipitated by rising demand and declining resources. It describes the pledge by the new NHS England boss, Simon Stevens, to make efficiency savings of close to £100bn over the five years from 2015 as “heroic”, warns that there is no evidence from any other healthcare system that integrating hospital and community services will produce short-term savings, and questions whether even in the medium term they would be on the scale predicted.

http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ding-integrated-hospital-community-care-right