Personalised care is not consistently delivered across the NHS, according to a new report by the Personalised Care Institute (PCI).
The report, called A new dawn for the NHS: a manifesto for putting personalised care at the centre, surveyed 500 healthcare professionals and 2,000 patients.
It found that though 90% of healthcare staff surveyed said they avoid just treating the condition and instead seeing a whole person, just 54% felt this was an approach routinely practiced across their organisation.
Almost one in ten (9%) said that none of the key elements of personalised care, such as avoiding medical jargon, were typically happening in their organisation. While 18% felt that personalised care had become less of a priority over the past 12 months.
Nearly a third (31%) of staff also said their employer perceives personalised care as a ‘nice to have but not central to good care’, but only 4% of healthcare staff surveyed felt the same way.
Among patients, 45% of people said they had received treatment advice that was not suitable for them over the past two years. The most common reason was being unable to physically follow the advice (11%), not being warned about side effects (11%), not understanding the benefits (10%) or affordability (7%).
The report suggested that the lack of personalised care was not only impacting care but also ‘creating service pressures’.
A third of people who had experienced unsuitable treatments said their condition had worsened and three in ten needed at least one additional GP appointment. A fifth (20%) also required an additional A&E visit.
The report called for the NHS 10-year plan to outline a strategy of how personalised care would be embedded across the NHS, as well as ‘ring-fenced’ central funding for ICBs and NHS primary care training hubs to train teams in this.
Dr Samuel Finnikin, a GP, andformer national clinical specialist advisor in personalised care for NHS England, said: ‘The reason that personalised care is so important is that it recognises that everybody is an individual with different priorities, values and preferences. If we don’t recognise that, we run the risk of providing people with care they may not want or indeed need, which results in worse outcomes and wasted resources.
‘This new research from the PCI shows that the current approach of placing responsibility on individual staff taking the time to learn about personalised care is leading to it being inconsistently delivered.
‘Instead, the health system should recognise the fundamental importance of personalised care education as a means for providing better care and a more sustainable system. Personalised care should not be seen as an extra task for organisations but rather as the mechanism by which we deliver high value, quality care.’
Dr Emma Hyde, clinical director of the PCI, added: ‘We could not agree more with Lord Darzi’s assessment that people need to be empowered to take control of their health. That can only be achieved though if the NHS workforce is supported to develop the right skills to do so.
‘Practising personalised care, even at an individual level, is more challenging than it might first appear, requiring, as it does, a wide array of theoretical and practical skills in communication, behaviour and decision-making. Embedding it across organisations adds greater complexity as it requires structural, cultural and attitudinal change, but that is the only way we can make personalised care ‘business as usual’ across the health service.’
She added: ‘That’s why we’re calling for the responsibility for engaging in personalised care training not to sit with individual health and care professionals but with those responsible for education in NHS Integrated Care Boards, NHS Trusts, NHS Primary Care Training Hubs and private healthcare companies.
‘We also want to see the Government and NHS England responding to Lord Darzi’s review with a commitment to a clear strategy on how the Government and NHS England will embed personalised care throughout the health and care system to empower people to have more choice and control.’
