Lansley: readmissions move is to drive integration

Mr Lansley announced hospital trusts would be paid and given responsibility for some care following acute treatments but they would not be paid for readmissions within 30 days of the initial treatment. He said the change would apply from April next year.

“The tariff should extend to reflect their [hospital trusts’] responsibility,” he said. “Instead of the community paying for immediate access to therapy and support, clearly hospitals would carry the payment.  We have to see how much that is appropriate to be.”

Mr Lansley said the announcement would result in “driving the integration of hospital and community services where it is the most appropriate, that is where it relates to patients who have been admitted to hospital”.

It suggests Mr Lansley is supportive of hospital trusts taking responsibility for more of some forms of community services that at present. His support for “vertical integration” in the form of acute trusts taking over community providers has been unclear.

Mr Lansley said the change was a move towards “payment systems that run between hospitals and community care more generally and along the patient pathway more generally”.

He said: “If we are to move to a system where payment is much less about spells of care it becomes more straight forward to say, ‘I’m commissioning you to look after my patient, and to undertake appropriate investigations, diagnostics and treatments.’”

Mr Lansley was speaking after his first speech as health secretary, hosted by National Voices and the Patients Association in east London today.