Integrated Neighbourhoods

Neighbourhood Health and Integrated Neighbourhood Teams (INTs), with primary care providers being at the heart of these teams, are integral to NHS reform.

The focus on INTs is central to the Government’s plans to improve the NHS and feature heavily in the recently published 10 Year Health Plan for England, but at present there is also a lack of concrete guidance on how INTs should be configured.

The plans says this will bring professionals into patient-centred teams, reducing fragmentation of care and improving access to general practice and enabling hospitals to focus on providing specialist care.

The Government says the neighbourhood health service will embody their new preventative principle that care should happen as locally as it can: digitally by default, in a patient’s home if possible, in a neighbourhood health centre when needed, in a hospital if necessary.

Principles
• Moving care towards a more integrated model based around people, communities and relationships.
• An INT takes collective responsibility for improving the health and wellbeing of everyone in the local community.
• Person-centred care needs to be flexible, joined up, proactive and preventative.
• Partnerships to strengthen primary and community based care key to success.
• Leverage community insights.
• Avoid rigid geographic boundaries.

Operating model
• The INT’s approach must be data driven.
• Likely to involve a core NHS team comprised of general practice, PCN, community services and mental health teams.
• Require multidisciplinary teams to work across organisational boundaries.
• Require strong infrastructure and coordination at regional, ICS and local levels.
• Place-based models and potentially provider collaboratives likely to take a key role.