Integrated Care Systems

This document, Integrating Care – The next steps to building strong and effective integrated care systems across England, builds on previous publications that set out proposals for legislative reform and is primarily focused on the operational direction of travel. It opens up a discussion with the NHS and its partners about how Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) could be embedded in legislation or guidance. Decisions on legislation will of course then be for Government and Parliament to make.

This builds on the route map set out in the NHS Long Term Plan, for health and care joined up locally around people’s needs. It signals a renewed ambition for how we can support greater collaboration between partners in health and care systems to help accelerate progress in meeting our most critical health and care challenges.

Over the last two years, ICSs have been formed across England.  In an integrated care system, NHS organisations, in partnership with local councils and others, take collective responsibility for managing resources, delivering NHS care, and improving the health of the population they serve. Integrated care systems have allowed organisations to work together and coordinate services more closely, to make real, practical improvements to people’s lives. For staff, improved collaboration can help to make it easier to work with colleagues from other organisations. And systems can better understand data about local people’s health, allowing them to provide care that is tailored to individual needs.

By working alongside councils, and drawing on the expertise of others such as local charities and community groups, the NHS can help people to live healthier lives for longer, and to stay out of hospital when they do not need to be there.

To know more about the Integrated Care Systems, please click here. 

Find out more about the South East London integrated care system here.