Better Care Fund ‘Little More Than Ruse’ to Paper Over Funding Pressures

The Better Care Fund is ‘little more than a ruse’ to paper over funding pressures, according to a new report from the Public Accounts Committee.

It says that there’s an ‘appallingly casual attitude’ to targets for reducing emergency admissions and delayed transfers of care.

Integration of health and social care services offers the prospect of improving both patient outcomes and value for money for the taxpayer, however the committee expressed serious doubt that the government’s latest integration initiative, the Better Care Fund (the Fund), would save money, reduce emergency admissions to hospitals and reduce the number of days people remain stuck in hospital unnecessarily.

Since then the Fund has failed to achieve any of these objectives and our witnesses displayed an appallingly casual attitude to the targets that had been set for reducing emergency admissions and delayed transfers of care, both of which have actually increased.

In practice, the report says, the Fund was little more than a complicated ruse to transfer money from health to local government to paper over the funding pressures on adult social care.

Integration the report goes on to say must now be delivered in the context of the sustainability and transformation planning process. Place-based planning will be critical to the future of health and social care.

However, to succeed, the NHS must find better ways to engage more genuinely with local government and local populations.

To view the report visit Read the full report: Integrating health and social care