Integration Pioneers, Personalisation and Self-Management

Unfortunately, travelling is something I find very difficult, and a trigger for my relapses. But fortunately, I have been lucky enough to work with some very accommodating and understanding people such as Don Redding from National Voices. I have been able to contribute and take part in conferences by video, instead of having to travel and risk a relapse to be there in person. If I'm going to be talking about self-management, its important that I self-manage myself too!

I was flattered and delighted when Don Redding asked me to contribute to the NHS Improving Quality Integration Pioneers event, and below is a transcript from my talk that I delivered via video to the event on the 3rd December 2013. This is also available via the National Voices website. 

Shoosmiths Improving Care conference

I recently had the opportunity to talk on behalf of the Patients Association at the Shoosmiths Improving Care conference, held at the Kings Fund in March. It was a very interesting day debating the topical issues around care. I was the last speaker of the day and wanted to bring everything together, focussing on the patient.

 

Thank you to Shoosmiths for organising a stimulating day, the opportunity to speak and for producing the video above.

Measuring the subjective

Another post inspired by Radio 4....

I was listening to Women's Hour last week, and they were discussing heavy periods (something I thankfully do not suffer from) and the way they were classified as 'heavy'. Without wanting to freak out any male readers I may have, I feel compelled to explain this to make my point - a heavy period was measured by asking women to bring in tampons and pads and measuring the volume of menstruated fluid.

So why I am talking about a condition I don't have when I have plenty of my own to fill a whole blog?

#IntegratedCare discussions with The King's Fund and National Voices

This morning I joined the Twitter conversation around integrated care that was hosted by The King's Fund and National Voices. There were a lot of interesting points made, which I wanted to capture here.

Integrated care had been a hot discussion topic for some time now, and whilst it was very encouraging to hear the issues raised, the next step is for some change! I agree with Nick Goodwin above, and sense there is a lot of old ground being covered, stating the obvious.

Integrated Care: what do patients, service users and carers want?

National Voices have produced a great report on Integrated Care.
The top lines sum it up really:

People want co-ordination. Not necessarily (organisational) integration.

People want care. Where is comes from is secondary. 


Worth reading!

What needs integrating in 'Integrated Care'?

This video is the best example that illustrates what 'integrated care' actually means, and how big the integrating challenge is (keep an eye out for the red circles!).

It shows the power of stories to back up and ground policy ideas, such as 'integration' which has been hijacked by the NHS-management language. What do we need to integrate in 'integrated care' and what would that integration look like? A key phrase that is emerging is that "the patient perspective should be the organising principle, not organisational  processes" (Don Redding, NHS Confed blog), and this video shows the patient perspective! It is an excellent story, video and idea.

Source: The Young Foundation, Ageing Well Innovation Programme