The Midlothian Integration Joint Board (IJB) publishes annual report
The Midlothian Integration Joint Board (IJB) plans and directs health and social care services for the people of Midlothian and published its Annual Performance Report 2021-22, today (Tuesday). This report recognises where health and social care in Midlothian has improved and addresses areas where there is more work to do.
Lots of challenges
The report found health and social care services continued to face a number of challenges in 2021/22 including an ageing population, inequalities in health, a national workforce shortage, increasing reliance on unpaid carers and growing pressures on acute hospitals. There was an increase in demand for community services as the way people accessed planned and unscheduled care changed and we were supporting people when they had to wait longer for planned services with increasingly complex needs.
More specialist services
There are now more specialist services including Physiotherapists, Primary Care Mental Health Nurses and Wellbeing Practitioners, Pharmacists, Advanced Nurse Practitioners for minor illness, Phlebotomists and Community Treatment & Assessment Clinics (CTACs) located in Midlothian GP practices than ever before.
Rising population
The number of people living in Midlothian continues to grow, and this has meant changes to the average age of our population and typical household size.
Improving quality of people's lives
However, despite the challenges, the support delivered by Midlothian Health and Social Care Partnership helped improve the quality of life for 81% of the people who responded to the Scottish Health and Care Experience (HACE) survey, an increase of 13 percentage points from the previous year.
Helping people live at home
Improvements have also been made to services to help people live as independently as possible at home or in a homely setting within their community. This includes reducing the number of days people have to stay in hospital when they are ready to return home and increasing the number of adults who have intensive care needs that are supported to live within their community.
Quality of services highly rated
The quality of the services people received was rated as high by 78.6% of those surveyed and demonstrated a considerable increase in quality from the previous year. This was also reflected in the grades awarded to several social care services by the Care Inspectorate.
Thanks to staff
Thanking staff, whom she described as “our greatest asset”, IJB Chief Officer and Midlothian Health and Social Care Partnership Director Morag Barrow said the response to Covid-19 had added more pressure.
Covid accelerated change
She said: “The pandemic did not stop us planning and delivering services but it reduced our capacity for implementing some planned redesigns of services. In many respects it accelerated change by creating opportunities to work together in new ways and strengthen our community connections.
Still work to do
While acknowledging there was still some work to do in areas such as workforce planning, she added: “As our recovery programme continues, we must reshape health and social care with a stronger emphasis on prevention and early intervention. We will listen to people and involve communities in how we design and deliver services. A community powered approach will ask ‘what makes us healthy?’ rather than ‘what makes us ill?’ and see communities, health and social care, housing, sport and leisure, welfare rights, employment services and the voluntary sector all playing a role in maintaining good health.”