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A snapshot of some of our most recent work and an insight into some of our ideas on the hot topics and issues that affect the public and not for profit sectors, and how we are responding to them.
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Councils ’should have stronger role in healthcare’
Local councils should be given a greater role in the delivery and management of health services in areas where local PCT (primary care trusts) can be seen to be failing, a new report states.
The New Local Government Network (NLGN) has produced a pamphlet suggesting that health services could be made "more locally focussed and efficient" by utilising the strength of public sector financial and commissioning performance as well as improving talent management in local areas.
According to the thinktank’s Primary Care Trusts: Tailoring Commissioning report, a range of factors hamper the performance of PCTs in Britain, including lack of expert financial management, overly-centralised structures, inefficient commissioning of services and frequent restructuring.
The pamphlet claims that delivery of community healthcare services could be significantly improved by allowing larger input from local authorities’ in the fields of commissioning, financial skills, talent specialists and management, particular in areas where local government performs well and PCTs are underperforming.
Author Dr Victoria Barbary suggests: "Involving local authorities in healthcare procurement would offer the possibility of joined-up commissioning across a range of cross-cutting policy areas. Funds could also be moved between services to tailor them to local needs."
In a recent response to the Commission on Integration and Cohesion, the NLGN urged the government to give councils greater freedom to deliver "creative and entrepreneurial solutions to bringing people together" in public sector partnerships and warned that a ‘national integration agency’ may result in a "centralised, one-size-fits all solutions to local issues".
Recent figures on the current health care postcode lottery from age discrimination charity Age Concern indicated that people in some areas are up to 160 times more likely than people in others to receive continuing NHS health care.
More about talent management.
