Effective Interagency working in Healthcare Health, Medicine Essay

“Drawing on relevant evidence, critically examine how improved inter-agency working could enhance person-centred care* for vulnerable people”
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Over the past few decades, there has been a growing concern for policies that promote collaborative or interagency working for health and social care across UK and other regions. These policies have been influenced by various drivers such as to meet the increasing demand, healthcare costs reduction and improve the effectiveness of the healthcare system. Policies and practice strategies that address these drive factors provide for multi-agency collaboration also referred to as inter-agency working. Various scholars have defined interagency working in different ways. Hodges, Nesman & Hernandez (1999) defined interagency working as “the process of agencies and families joining together for the purpose of interdependent problem solving that focuses on improving services to children and families” (p.8). Linden (2002) stated that “collaboration occurs when people from different organizations, produce something through joint effort, resources, and decision making, and share ownership of the final product or service” (p.7). From these earlier definitions, it can be concluded that interagency working is when two parties (local, private, public) join their resources in order to address the needs of a particular needs. Due to dynamic changes in lifestyle, governments and private sectors have developed interagency working programmes in order to address these changes in the society.
Evaluations of these programmes have provided mixed results where some demonstrate improved outcomes while others claim that these improvements are small and non-significant. On the other hand, although some have identified significant cost reductions, others have demonstrated a complex image. These results have led to other studies that have attempted to establish barriers to effective interagency working and factors that promote effective integration.
In Scotland, various policies have been developed to promote interagency working in health and social care. For the past few decades, a number of policies have been implemented to ensure effective integration of health and social care. In the 1980s and 90s, the Scottish healthcare system was criticised due to increased demand and costs demanding for joined up services to address the raised concerns. Towards the end of the 1990s, the arguments shifted to the need for quicker and better decision making, reduction of the existing gaps and improvement of the quality of service. Due to these demands, various structures and systems were created in Scotland to promote interagency working. In 2002, the Community Care and Health Act was implemented to enable NHS Boards and local authorities to work together. In 2003, another Act (Local Government Act) was implemented introducing Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) and the National Health Service Reform Act in 2004. This paper reviews the available literature to demonstrate how interagency working can improve person-centred care on elderly people to reduce falls both in hospital facilities and homes.
The number of falls in th...