Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to his speech of 19 June 2015, on A new deal for general practice, in what ways he plans for GPs to work more closely with (a) the social care sector, (b) the community care sector and (c) mental health providers.

The NHS Five Year Forward View set out the ambition that over the next five years and beyond, the traditional boundaries between general practitioners (GPs) and hospitals, social care and mental health services will be dissolved, in recognition of the fact that rather than a single episode of care, people increasingly need a range of services over a longer period, organised around their specific needs.

A number of established initiatives are already driving this, such as the Better Care Fund, where councils and clinical commissioning groups are required to pool a proportion of their respective budgets and spend this on the joined-up provision of health and care services, and improved communication between general practice and other sectors, with many GPs now providing dedicated phone lines and timely access for staff in other care settings to contact them for advice.

Key to supporting the closer working of GPs and other sectors are the 29 vanguard geographies that were announced in March this year. These bring home care, mental health and community nursing, GP services and hospitals together for the first time since 1948.

- 14 multispecialty community providers are moving care out of hospitals into the community by bringing together GPs and specialists, for example those who work in mental health;

- nine integrated primary and acute care systems are joining together GP, hospital, community and mental health services;

- six sites covering enhanced health in care homes are offering older people better, joined up health, care and rehabilitation services.

Together with other vanguard sites looking at coordinated urgent and emergency care, and the acute care collaboration sites that will be announced later this year, it is estimated that the vanguards will benefit more than five million patients, and they will take the national lead on the development of innovative care models.