Integrated Health and Housing For the Future

Health reform in the UK has become a major challenge, especially at a time when budget cuts are at the order of the day and the recession still looms in the not too forgotten past. Perhaps the integration of housing and other services with health reform could offer a solution to constrained budgets.

With the growing population of older people in the UK and across the world, care giving organisations have been under considerable pressure because of this basic lack of resources. The policy team at the National Housing Federation recently discussed what could be done to fix problems without creating new ones.

The policy team sees its duty as one to influence legislation that affects housing and support for older people. The focus is on improving the lives of older people.

An article in The Guardian suggests that, while the reforms currently proposed for health care could have severe impacts on those who depend on the system, housing could offer the solutions that seem to remain so elusive.

According to the article, one of the prominent features of the proposed reforms, namely prevention, should act as a guiding indicator that the NHS should partner with organisations that can help it further its goals while also positively impacting clients.

Many organisations, for example, focus on helping older people continue to live independent, autonomous lives for as long as possible. Clearly, housing is an excellent candidate to help with this effort.

For this reason, the National Housing Federation policy team has suggested that housing be integrated with the NHS and other services to provide older people with the care they need while also relieving the burden on isolated organisations.

The central point is that, by working together, organisations can provide streamlined and integrated services, while supporting each other in terms of cost and timely service delivery. This would create a much stronger platform of care for older people, and would also be cheaper to maintain than a number of isolated organizations.

One specific benefit of integrating housing with hospital services is that the incidence of delayed discharge can be improved. When an older person is ready to leave the hospital, for example, the housing organisation can prepare the person’s home and appropriate support.

The housing and support that can be provided in this way will go a long way towards relieving the burden of acute care that currently rests on the health care system. At the same time, no older person will be denied service because of government cuts.

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