Getting the Basics Right: Final Report on the Care Closer to Home: Making the Shift

This document evaluates the NHS Institute’s Care Closer to Home Programme, which ran from November 2005 to March 2007. It identifies the factors that helped or hindered progress in shifting care outside hospital, and the lessons for the NHS from the experience of field test sites. The NHS Institute’s Care Closer to Home Programme
was established in 2005 to explore the scope for bringing about shifts in care within the NHS. Following an observation phase that ran from November 2005 to February 2006, the NHS Institute selected five healthcare communities to act as field test sites. In these five sites, 14 projects were identified to provide the focus for the programme.
This report summarises the main findings of the evaluation and the lessons for the NHS. It notes that almost all the 14 projects have started to test the scope for making shifts in care, with some getting underway more quickly than others.

(May 2007, 49 pages)