Healthcare - March 2010

A revised framework for Continuing Care

The Department of Health has published a revised National Framework for NHS Continuing Care and NHS Funded Nursing Care. In common with its predecessor, the framework should ensure that commissioners take a consistent approach to continuing healthcare nationally. Now that NHS care is provided in the context of world class commissioning and emphasis is placed on services that maximise an individual’s control over their own care package and reflect their personal preferences, it is hoped that disputes over commissioned care will diminish. 

Where service users have previously been in receipt of direct payments from local authorities the potential for dispute is still strong, but the NHS is running a pilot programme in respect of personal health budgets and Gill Ayling, the Department’s Deputy Director of Social Care Local Government and Care Partnerships  stresses in her letter to NHS Trusts introducing the revised framework, that even where services are to be commissioned in areas outside those of the approved pilot emphasis is to be placed on person centred commissioning to avoid the perennial problems which typically arise where there is a change in the responsible commissioner.