Clinical and professional leadership
Each Integrated Care System (ICS) will need to engage with different health and social care professions, local authorities and the voluntary sector, and work with providers across the system on how best to care for the local population.
They will be governed by an ‘ICS NHS body’, which will be responsible for NHS strategic planning and allocation decisions. An ‘ICS health and care partnership’ will be responsible for developing a plan to address the system’s health, public health and social care needs, which the ICS NHS body and local authorities will be required to ‘have regard to’ when making decisions.
We want these new reforms to be an opportunity for people working across the health service to shape the future of the NHS. Pharmacists must be included in this engagement and have a voice in local NHS decision-making, to help inform ICS planning and support services which make the most of pharmacists’ expertise to improve outcomes for patients.
A Design Framework set out expectations on the governance of ICSs, including the need for health and care professionals to be represented and involved in decision-making at all levels.
Read about RPS work on system leadership