Vince Barry

If you are part of a leadership team working across a health system to deliver integrated care or improve population health, we can help you by providing consultancy advice and support. Our starting point is the recognition that delivering change is never easy, especially when it involves working across systems of care.

Integrated care systems, as they were re-branded in updated planning guidance published recently by NHS England, bring together NHS commissioners, providers and local authorities to plan how to improve health and care for the populations they serve. For the organisations involved in these systems, lines of accountability remain unchanged. NHS organisations continue to look upwards to NHS England and NHS Improvement and local authorities look outwards to their communities.

Accountable care is not a panacea and unless implemented with skill it will not deliver the improvements in health and care envisaged in the Forward View. The King's Fund believes that accountable care should be supported because it offers the best hope for the NHS and its partners to provide the integrated health and care services required to meet the needs of the growing and ageing population.