The Shifting Care: what's the evidence? event was held in London on Friday 9 May and focused on shifting care from hospitals to the community.

Summary of the seminar

The SDO Network ran its first event in London on Friday 9 May - Shifting Care: what's the evidence? A half day interactive learning seminar which focused on the transfer of services from hospitals to the community, delegates heard from leading researchers and frontline managers working in this area. Key note speakers included Professor Martin Roland and Dr Keith Freeman. Presentations, relevant research reports and podcasts from the event are now available to download.

Key issues raised at the seminar included:

• Managers need to be very clear about what their primary objective is when shifting care. Is it to increase access, reduce costs, improve clinical outcomes or improve patients' satisfaction?
• The danger of 'supply led demand.'
• Services should be developed around the needs of the patient. This will often mean the development of new innovative patient centred services, doing things differently, and not simply providing 'cut and paste outpatient clinics' in the community.
• A major barrier to service redesign when shifting care is the perceived adverse financial impact the development of new services may cause.
• Primary and secondary sectors need to be incentivised to work together but current policy is focused on competition.

Key questions for future research:

• What is the appropriate level of service provision for different clinical areas?
• The role of patients in determining what they need from the healthcare system.
• Are there any differences in clinical outcomes for similar services located in different settings and provided by different professionals?

What did you think?

Thank you to everyone who attended and helped make the event a huge success. The feedback from delegates has been extremely positive and helps us to shape future events.

Presentations from the event

The presentations and podcasts from this event are now available to download.