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‘Green light’ for biggest health and social care provider

18/01/12

NHS Midlands and East has approved plans for the biggest joint provider of health and social care in England, it has been revealed.

The plans will see Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Partnership Trust take on a 907-strong social care workforce and an annual budget of £153m from Staffordshire County Council.

The merger will create an organisation with a turnover of £350 million, which will provide community health services to a population of more than 1 million residents, and social care to about 830,000 residents. Stoke-on-Trent City Council, which is a unitary authority, will continue to provide its own social care services.

Currently, there are just six organisations providing a similar model of integrated community health services and social care, which serve an average population of about 165,000. This includes Wye Valley Trust in Herefordshire which also provides acute services.

Staffordshire Council’s announcement that the plans to merge had been given the go-ahead, comes after the NHS Future Forum called for an increased national focus on the potential benefits of integration.

Council cabinet member for wellbeing Matthew Ellis described how it had always been intended that the partnership trust, which took on provider arms from Staffordshire’s three PCTs when it was formed in September, would follow an integrated model. He said:

‘This has been designed around providing the best possible service to patients and residents, not around saving money. The savings are a welcome by-product.’

The trust’s business plan sets out the potential for annual savings of up to £31.5 million for Staffordshire health economy, achievable through estates rationalisation and reduced management costs, as well as anticipated avoidance of more expensive forms of care. It is hoped that delayed transfers of care will be reduced to ‘negligible’ levels, saving up to £2 million, while telehealth schemes will lead to a 12 per cent reduction in outpatient appointments, in turn saving up to £8 million.

There will be a single point of access, with patients being designated a named manager to co-ordinate their care.

It is understood that the trust and the council have signed a 10-year agreement, with a three year break clause. The ambition is to move towards a commissioner / provider relationship.

Staff will transfer over from April, with the option of keeping their local government pension or switching to the NHS scheme.