Community Services: how they can transform care

This King's Fund report argues that significant changes to community services are needed to realise the ambition of moving more care out of hospital and closer to people's homes. Taking a fresh look at the important role of community services, it identifies that this would reduce hospital admission rates, releasing resources for patients to be cared for at home and stemming growing demand for hospital beds. In particular, delivering outcomes that:

  • reduce unnecessary complexity of community services
  • forge much closer relationships with groups of general practices
  • build multidisciplinary teams for people with complex needs, including social care, mental health and other services
  • support these teams with specialist medical input - particularly for older people and those with chronic conditions
  • create services that offer an alternative to hospital stay
  • build the information infrastructure, workforce, and ways of working and commissioning that are required to support this
  • reach out into the wider community to improve prevention, provide support for isolated people, and create healthy communities.