Govtoday | Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS | Healthy Lives, Healthy People | Public Health Reform | To Put Patients First | To empower NHS staff | To Focus on Outcomes | Budget Deficit |

The Health and Social Reform Portal is Govtoday’s information resource for the Health and Social Care sector. A Community Forum for sharing knowledge, innovation and best practice, the Portal provides the platform for ongoing Debate, evaluating the Coalition Government’s Health and Social Care Strategies.

The White Papers ‘ Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS’ and ‘Healthy Lives, Healthy People’ set out the Coalition Government’s ambitions for health outcomes in this country to be amongst the best in the world, whilst delivering perhaps the most comprehensive reforms the NHS has witnessed since it began in 1948.

These ambitious Reforms are based around three key purposes:

• To put patients first - ‘no decision is made about them, without them’;
• To focus on outcomes - build a culture of evidence and evaluation, using innovation and evidence to provide quality care;
• To empower NHS staff - take decision-making closer to patients, combining clinical decision-making with the use of resources.

Public Health Reform as set out in the ‘Healthy Lives, Healthy People’ White Paper published in November 2010, details the long-term strategy for Public Health in England, in response to Sir Michael Marmot’s’ Fair Society, Healthy Lives’ Report.

To ensure Public Health is responsive to the different needs of each community, the Coalition Government aims to:

• Create local freedom
• Create Accountability
• Ring fence funding

‘Healthy Lives, Healthy People’ sets out how local public health leadership and responsibility will be returned to, and strengthened within, local government and their communities.

The Health and Social Care Reform Portal will provide further information on the Government’s strategy for health and social care as policy is formulated and announced.