Funding for community services is welcome opportunity to address past failures
22 November 2018
- Prime minister Theresa May set out a major new investment in primary and community healthcare, worth £3.5bn a year in real terms by 2023/4, to build on the existing NHS budget for these services.
- May announced that more patients will be cared for at home and in their community to avoid them going into or staying in hospital unnecessarily.
- This will be achieved through community-based 24/7 rapid response teams and dedicated support for care home residents.
- This announcement forms a key part of the long-term plan for the NHS which is the biggest ever cash boost for the health service.
Responding to the announcement of additional funding for primary and community care under the NHS long term plan, the head of policy at NHS Providers, Amber Jabbal, said:
“We are pleased to see that community services and primary care are central to the development of the new NHS long term plan and that £3.5bn of the additional £20.5bn will go to these services.
“Our recent report on community services highlighted that, despite repeated commitments to give the community sector a key strategic role, and despite compelling evidence of the great contribution these services can make in improving care and treating people closer to home, they have too often been marginalised and neglected. This announcement is a welcome opportunity to address this long standing failure.
We are pleased to see that community services and primary care are central to the development of the new NHS long term plan.
“It is not clear from this announcement whether the additional funding amounts to a significantly increased share of the overall NHS budget for primary and community services. We look forward to detailed confirmation that this will be the case.
“Given that new commitments are being announced separately, we need to see how these all fit together. It is vital that we recover NHS finances and performance as well as transform services. To do this the long term plan must be coherent, have clear priorities and be manageable for the frontline staff who will deliver it.”