HEALTHWATCH: Have you heard of the Integrated Care System?

The NHS and Local Authority are trying to work better together. As you know the care system is fragmented and difficult to navigate.

Services will look at one specific complaint rather than take a holistic view of you and your health.

An Integrated Care System (ICS) is the latest jargon to describe local organisations working in partnership, taking collective responsibility for resources and population health, in an effort to better coordinate care.

Our needs today are changing from those the current health and care system was designed to address. People are living longer, society is getting older and more people are living with long-term conditions such as diabetes and asthma.

Meanwhile, new technologies and treatments are being discovered that can improve the quality of care and treatment.

The Berkshire West Integrated Care System is made up of key partners including the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Berkshire Healthcare Foundation Trust, Berkshire West Clinical Commissioning Group, Local Authorities, voluntary sector organisations and providers of GP services in four localities or neighbourhood alliances.

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With West Berkshire, Wokingham and Reading working together the systems covers a registered population of approximately 528,000 residents.

More people need care across a number of different settings – hospitals, GPs, clinics, nursing homes and in their own homes. An integrated approach means working together to make practical improvements to patient care, such as making it easier to see a doctor, speeding up cancer diagnosis and offering faster help to people with mental ill-heath.

One of the biggest transformations will be that of outpatients services at Royal Berkshire Hospital.

The Integrated Care system will support the hospital to switch the mode of delivery from the traditional face to face, to more widespread use of technology such as virtual clinics, telephone clinics, remote monitoring and non-face-to-face type of interaction with outpatients.

This will be more convenient for the patient as they may have busy lifestyles that don’t often allow them to come to hospital clinics for face to face appointments.

There is a big emphasis on delivering care outside of the hospital. Healthwatch hears how frustrating it is for you to go to the hospital for a simple blood test that could have been done in Wokingham.

Questions are being asked about where the best place for patients to be looked after is. This may be that patients are seen in the outpatient facility in one of our community centres.

And most excitingly the ICS is looking at ways to advance care so often patients don’t present in clinic with one problem, they may have three or four problems. Bringing specialties together within one clinic appointment.

Further information is available on the ICS website: www.berkshirewestics.org